Ex-Officer Who Helped Pin George Floyd Is Sentenced to Prison

ST. PAUL, Minn. — A former Minneapolis police officer who helped pin George Floyd down as he struggled to breathe and later died was sentenced Wednesday morning to 3 years in jail for violating Mr. Floyd’s rights. A colleague who was current and saved bystanders away from what was taking place was scheduled to be sentenced later within the morning.

A federal decide sentenced the previous officer, J. Alexander Kueng, after a jury convicted him earlier this 12 months on costs that he failed to offer medical assist to Mr. Floyd or to intervene as one other officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck for greater than 9 minutes.

The demise of Mr. Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, prompted protests in opposition to police abuse and racism throughout the nation within the spring and summer season of 2020 that had been joined by hundreds of thousands of Individuals.

Mr. Kueng, 28, who’s Black, was subsequent to Mr. Chauvin for a lot of the encounter, and positioned his personal knee on Mr. Floyd for a number of minutes as Mr. Floyd begged for air and finally misplaced consciousness.

Choose Paul Magnuson, who has overseen the federal case in opposition to the 4 former Minneapolis law enforcement officials concerned in Mr. Floyd’s demise — all of whom had been fired — handed down Mr. Kueng’s sentence in a federal courthouse in St. Paul.

Manda Sertich, a federal prosecutor, stated on the listening to that Mr. Kueng had not tried to assist Mr. Floyd as soon as he misplaced consciousness, and that Mr. Keung deserved a “severe penalty,” regardless that he had not supposed for Mr. Floyd to die.

In a while Wednesday, Choose Magnuson was anticipated to condemn the previous officer Tou Thao, who saved anxious bystanders away from Mr. Floyd as they shouted that he was in a dire situation.

Mr. Thao, 36, who’s Asian American, and Mr. Kueng every nonetheless face state costs of aiding and abetting manslaughter and homicide, and they’re scheduled to go to trial in January.

Thomas Lane, 39, who’s white and who helped to restrain Mr. Floyd by holding his legs, has pleaded responsible each to a federal cost of violating Mr. Floyd’s rights and to state costs of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. Final week he obtained a federal sentence of two and a half years in jail; he’s scheduled to be sentenced within the state case in September.

Federal prosecutors had requested the decide to imprison Mr. Thao and Mr. Kueng for “considerably longer” than the six and a half years that they requested in Mr. Lane’s case, however lower than 20 years.

On Might 25, 2020, the day of Mr. Floyd’s demise, the officers went to a South Minneapolis road nook after a clerk at a comfort retailer there known as 911 to report that Mr. Floyd had used a counterfeit $20 invoice to purchase cigarettes. Once they arrived and tried to position Mr. Floyd behind a police automotive, he struggled with them, saying he was claustrophobic and was having bother respiratory.

Video taken by a bystander exterior the shop, displaying officers pinning Mr. Floyd face down on the pavement, combating for breath, ricocheted around the globe and set off protests in opposition to police violence and racial injustice.