The three former Minneapolis, MN police officers who, with former officer Derek Chauvin, were involved in George Floyd’s death, were found guilty on all counts Thursday in a federal trial of violating Floyd’s civil rights.
Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane were charged with depriving Floyd of his right to medical care when Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes on May 25, 2020, as the 46-year-old Black man was handcuffed and face down on the street. Thao and Keung were also charged with violating Floyd’s civil rights by failing to intervene in Chauvin’s actions.
Lane is white, Kueng is Black and Thao is Hmong American.
Chauvin, who was criminally convicted in Floyd’s death in a state trial, pleaded guilty in December to federal charges that he also violated Floyd’s civil rights.
The 12-person jury of eight women and four men who all appeared to be white deliberated for about 13 hours over two days to reach their verdict.
Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back, Lane held his legs and Thao kept bystanders back during Floyd’s arrest. Kueng and Lane both said they deferred to Chauvin as the senior officer at the scene, while Thao testified that he relied on the other officers to care for Floyd’s medical needs as his attention was elsewhere.
Conviction of a federal civil rights violation that results in death is punishable by life in prison or even death, but such sentences are extremely rare.
Floyd’s videotaped killing sparked protests in Minneapolis that spread around the globe as part of reckoning over racial injustice. Chauvin was convicted of murder in April last year in state court and is currently serving a 22-and-a-half-year prison sentence.
Thao, Kueng and Lane still face a state criminal trial in June on charges that they aided and abetted murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death.
