MIAMI, United States.- A federal judge sentenced Derek Chauvin, a former police officer who smothered African-American George Floyd, to 21 years in prison for violating the victim’s civil rights, the EFE news agency reported Thursday.
Chauvin, who had already been sentenced last year by a Minnesota state court to 22 and a half years in prison for the murder of Floyd, of which he will serve 15 years, pleaded guilty last February to violating Floyd’s civil rights after close an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office to simultaneously serve this sentence with the one he already faces for murder.
The former Minneapolis police officer was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison by Judge Paul Magnuson, after the Prosecutor’s Office requested a sentence of 25 years, and the defense a maximum of 20 years.
The federal crime of violating a person’s civil rights carries a range of penalties from prison to life in prison to the death penalty, depending on the circumstances of the crime and the injuries that result from it, according to the Justice Department.
George Floyd died on May 25, 2020 after Chauvin pressed his knee against his neck for more than nine minutes while trying to arrest him for using a counterfeit bill to pay at a store.
Chauvin was accompanied by former agents Thomas Lane, Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao, who were already convicted last February of violating Floyd’s civil rights by not providing assistance while his partner suffocated him.
The event, which was recorded on video by witnesses on the street, triggered a wave of protests and racial riots in the United States unprecedented since the assassination of Martin Luther King in the late 1960s.
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