A federal grand jury has indicted Derek Chauvin and the other three former Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s fatal arrest last spring, charging them with violating the Black man’s civil rights, according to an indictment unsealed Friday.
The potentially precedent-setting indictment accuses Chauvin of violating Floyd’s “constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a police officer” when the ex-cop knelt on the 46-year-old’s neck and back for more than nine minutes and stayed there “even after Mr. Floyd became unresponsive.”
Officers J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao, meanwhile, “willfully failed to intervene” to stop their colleague’s use of unreasonable force in the brutal police encounter that was captured in a graphic bystander video and sparked nationwide outrage, the indictment alleges. The three cops and former officer Thomas Lane, all of whom were fired a day after the May 25 killing, are also charged with willfully failing to provide life-saving efforts as Floyd lay on the ground “in clear need of medical care,” according to the document.
The allegations come just over two weeks after Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd following a trial in state court. A separate indictment unsealed Friday accuses him of violating a 14-year-old boy’s constitutional rights by using a neck restraint against him in a 2017 arrest. Chauvin, 45, held the boy by the throat and and struck him multiple times in the head with a flashlight “without legal justification,” prosecutors said.
The Justice Department had been working on the case against the officers since Floyd’s death, but it reportedly delayed bringing the charges to a grand jury to avoid interfering with Chauvin’s murder trial. The white ex-cop was found guilty of second- and third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter and is set to be sentenced in June.
The three-week trial did not touch on any civil rights issues and was strictly about Chauvin’s role in causing Floyd’s death. But activists have long been calling for civil rights charges as the case that ignited massive protests last summer has become a symbol of police brutality and systemic racism in America.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump and two other lawyers representing Floyd’s family said they were “encouraged” by the charges and eager to see the impact the case could have on “Black citizens and all Americans for generations to come.”
“Today’s federal indictment for criminal civil rights violations associated with the murder of George Floyd reinforces the strength and wisdom of the United States Constitution,” they said in a statement. “The Constitution claims to be committed to life, liberty and justice, and we are seeing this realized in the justice George Floyd continues to receive. This comes after hundreds of years of American history in which Black Americans unfortunately did not receive equal justice.”
In the state criminal case, the officers who assisted Chauvin in the deadly arrest are charged with aiding and abetting murder and manslaughter and are scheduled to face trial together in August.
Thao, 35, Kueng, 27, Lane, 38, appeared in a virtual court hearing Friday morning to hear the new charges against them and were allowed to remain free on bond, the Associated Press reported. Chauvin, who is being held at a maximum-security facility near Minneapolis, did not attend the proceeding.
Lane and Keung were the first to arrive at the Cup Foods convenience store were Floyd was accused of passing a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Lane and Keung later helped Chauvin hold Floyd face-down on the pavement while Thao stood near the scene in an attempt to keep bystanders away.
The charges announced Friday are separate from a newly launched federal probe examining a possible “pattern or practice” of unconstitutional or unlawful policing in the city of Minneapolis. Attorney General Merrick Garland launched the investigation a day after Chauvin’s murder trial ended last month, saying the verdict “does not address potentially systemic policing issues in Minneapolis.”
“The charges announced today are criminal,” the Justice Department said Friday, “while the pattern or practice investigation is a civil investigation that will be conducted separately and independently from the criminal case, and will be handled by a different team of career staff from the Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
Chauvin’s defense attorney, Eric Nelson, did not immediately comment on the federal charges Friday. Earlier this week, he filed a motion requesting a new trial, citing unspecified jury and prosecutorial misconduct, legal errors, abuse of discretion ad a verdict “contrary to law.” Nelson also argued that his client did not get a fair trial because Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill, who presided over the case, denied a request for a change of venue and jury sequestration.
Chauvin was sent back to prison immediately after the verdict and has been placed on administrative segregation at Minnesota’s “most secure” prison unit for his own safety, according to the state’s corrections department. He technically faces up to 40 years behind bars on the top murder charge but is expected to get less time because he is a first-time offender.
