A US court on Friday sentenced Derek Chauvin, a former police officer, to 22 and a half years in jail for murdering George Floyd, whose death in May 2020 sparked the largest civil rights movement in American in decades and forced fresh light on historical injustices around the world.
Chauvin, 45, will serve effectively only for 15 of those years; the rest, depending on good behaviour, will be supervised release.
“I’m not basing my sentence on public opinion. I’m not basing it on the attempt to send any messages,” said judge Peter Cahill, explaining his order, which ran into 22 pages. “The job of a trial court judge is to apply the law to specific facts and to deal with individual cases.”
A jury had in April held Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis police force, guilty on three counts of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder (unintentional murder caused by use of eminently dangerous act) and secondary manslaughter.
President Joe Biden called the sentence appropriate. “I don’t know all the circumstances that were considered but it seems to be under the guidelines, that seem to be appropriate,” he said. Biden had met Floyd’s family at the White House in May and discussed provision of a policing reforms legislation named after Floyd.
The sentencing came after emotional appeals and counter-appeals from Floyd’s family, including his seven-year-old daughter Gianna Floyd and Chauvin’s mother Carolyn Pawlenty, who professed complete faith in her son’s innocence.
Chauvin spoke for the first time in court. “Due to some additional legal matters at hand, I’m not able to give a full formal statement at this time,” said Chauvin, referring to pending federal cases against him. “But, very briefly, I want to give my condolences to the Floyd family.”
Benjamin Crump, who is Floyd family attorney, welcomed the sentence. “This is the longest sentence that a police officer has ever been sentenced to in the history of the state of Minnesota, But, this should not be the exception when a Black person is killed by brutality by police. It should be the norm.”
Floyd’s death under Chauvin’s knee on May 25 last year triggered protests that had turned violent in the initial days with the National Guard being called out in various parts of the country, including in Washington DC, where then President Donald Trump had added to the unrest by seeking to draw political advantage.
Protests – under the slogan “Black Lives Matter” – spread quickly beyond the shores of the US and led to the toppling of the statue of a slave-trader in Bristol, UK; targeting of a 150-year-old statute of King Leopold II in Brussels, Belgium for brutalities in Congo; and protests in Australia against the subjugation of its indigenous people.
