A former Minneapolis police officer who held again bystanders whereas his colleagues restrained a dying George Floyd has been convicted of aiding and abetting manslaughter.
Tou Thao, who already had been convicted in federal court docket of violating Floyd’s civil rights, was the final of 4 former officers going through judgment in state court docket in Floyd’s killing. He rejected a plea settlement and, as an alternative of going to trial, let Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill resolve the decision based mostly on written filings by either side and proof offered in earlier instances.
“There is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Thao’s actions were objectively unreasonable from the perspective of a reasonable police officer, when viewed under the totality of the circumstances,” Cahill wrote in a 177-page ruling that was filed Monday night time and launched Tuesday.
Floyd, a Black man, died May 25, 2020, after officer Derek Chauvin, who’s white, pinned him to the bottom along with his knee on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes as he pleaded for air. The killing, captured on bystander video, touched off protests all over the world and prompted a nationwide reckoning with police brutality and racism.
Chauvin, the senior officer on the scene, was convicted of homicide and manslaughter in April 2021 and later pleaded responsible within the federal case. Two different officers — J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane — pleaded responsible to state fees of aiding and abetting manslaughter and have been convicted with Thao of their federal case.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who led the prosecution crew, stated Thao’s conviction “brings one more measure of accountability in the tragic death of George Floyd” whereas calling on Congress to enact a sweeping police overhaul named for Floyd.
“While we have now reached the end of the prosecution of Floyd’s murder, it is not behind us.” Ellison stated. “There is much more that prosecutors, law-enforcement leaders, rank-and-file officers, elected officials, and community can do to bring about true justice in law enforcement and true trust and safety in all communities.”
Defense lawyer Robert Paule didn’t instantly return messages in search of remark.
Lawyers for the Floyd household referred to as the decision “another measure of accountability for his death.”
“Nearly three years after George was killed, the family and Minneapolis community continue to heal as the criminal justice system prevails. With each of these measures of justice, it is even more so demonstrated that police brutality is an illegal — and punishable — act,” civil rights lawyer Ben Crump and his crew stated in a press release.
The judge set sentencing for Aug. 7. Minnesota guidelines recommend four years on the manslaughter count, which Thao would serve concurrently with his 3 1/2-year federal sentence.
Unlike the other three former officers, Thao maintained he did nothing wrong. When he rejected a plea deal in state court last August, he said “it would be lying” to plead guilty.
Cahill based his decision on exhibits and transcripts from Chauvin’s murder trial, which he presided over, and the federal civil rights trial of Thao, Kueng and Lane. Thao was specifically convicted then of depriving Floyd of his right to medical care and of failing to intervene and stop Chauvin. Cahill wrote that he focused on the evidence that pertained to Thao and not on the other officers or their pleas and guilty verdicts.
Thao is Hmong American, Kueng is Black and Lane is white.
Thao testified during his federal trial that he was relying on the other officers to care for Floyd’s medical needs while he served as “a human traffic cone” to control a group of about 15 bystanders and traffic outside a Minneapolis convenience store where Floyd had tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.
Thao said that when he and Chauvin arrived, the other officers were struggling with Floyd. He said it was clear to him, as the other officers tried to put Floyd into a squad car, “that he was under the influence of some type of drugs.”
His body camera video showed he told onlookers at one point, “This is why you don’t do drugs, kids.” When an off-duty, out-of-uniform Minneapolis firefighter asked if officers had checked Floyd’s pulse, he ordered her, “Back off!”
Thao acknowledged he heard onlookers becoming more anxious about Floyd’s condition and that he could hear Floyd saying, “I can’t breathe.” But Thao said he didn’t know there was anything seriously wrong with him even as an ambulance took him away.
Cahill wrote that he found that key parts of Thao’s testimony, and his justifications for his actions, were “not credible.”
The decide wrote that underneath Minneapolis Police Department insurance policies, “it was objectively unreasonable to (among other things): encourage fellow officers to engage in a dangerous prone restraint for 9 minutes and 24 seconds; encourage those officers not to use a hobble; actively assist their restraint by acting as a ‘human traffic cone’; and prevent bystanders from rendering medical aid.”
“Thao’s actions were even more unreasonable in light of the fact that he was under a duty to intervene to stop the other officers’ excessive use of force and was trained to render medical aid,” the decide added.
In maintaining with an settlement between the prosecution and protection, Cahill dismissed a extra critical aiding and abetting second-degree homicide rely with a presumptive sentence of 12 1/2 years.
Vice President Kamala Harris and others have referred to as for reviving the the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act this yr after it stalled within the Senate amid Republican opposition in 2020 and 2021. The laws goals to eradicate misconduct, racial discrimination and extreme drive in policing nationwide. It would ban the use of chokeholds and finish the “qualified immunity” that protects officers from lawsuits, amongst different issues.
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