A pair of former Minneapolis police officers who violated George Floyd‘s civil rights will spend several years behind bars after a judge delivered new sentences Wednesday for federal charges.
J. Alexander Kueng was the first former officer to be sentenced Wednesday, receiving a 36-month concurrent sentence in prison. Tou Thao, another former officer, was ordered to serve 42 months in prison shortly after Kueng’s sentencing.
Both were convicted in February on two counts of violating Floyd’s civil rights for his May 25, 2020, death in Minneapolis. A jury found they violated the rights of Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, when they did not stop then-officer Derek Chauvin as he knelt on Floyd’s neck for nearly 10 minutes while he struggled to breathe.
DEREK CHAUVIN SENTENCED TO 21 YEARS IN FEDERAL PRISON FOR CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
Federal prosecutors asked senior U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson to sentence the pair for a less severe sentence than Chauvin, a white man who received 21 years in prison on two counts of violating Floyd’s civil rights after he agreed to a sentence of 20 to 25 years in his December plea to a federal charge in Floyd’s killing.
But prosecutors still requested a longer sentence than the one given to Thomas Lane, a fourth officer who is white, who already received two and a half years in prison for aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter and aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder related to Floyd’s death two years ago.
During the 2020 slaying of Floyd, when Chauvin held his knee on his neck, Lane held down Floyd’s feet while Kueng held his back. Thao was in charge of keeping back bystanders.
Floyd’s girlfriend, Courteney Ross, gave witness testimony on Wednesday for both of the officers.
“I will never forget you saying to the crowd of onlookers, ‘This is why you don’t do drugs,'” Ross told Thao, who is a Hmong American.
Kueng, who is black, declined to make a statement before his sentencing, though Thao gave a lengthy testimony on Wednesday regarding his time in jail following the May 2020 incident.
Both former officers have a voluntary surrender date scheduled for Oct. 4 and have the choice to serve their sentences in either Duluth or Yankton, which are South Dakota-based federal facilities. Their sentences will be followed by two years of supervised release.
After a half-hour hearing last week to dispute sentencing guideline calculations, Magnuson appeared to be partially swayed by attorneys for the former officers.
The judge sided in part with arguments raised by their lawyers by finding that involuntary manslaughter, not second-degree murder, should be used to tally up the offense levels in their respective cases.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Defendants Kueng and Thao each made a tragic misdiagnosis in their assessment of Mr. Floyd,” Magnuson wrote in an order on Friday. “The evidence showed that Kueng genuinely thought that Mr. Floyd was suffering from excited delirium with a drug overdose, and Thao genuinely believed that the officers were dealing with a drug overdose with possible excited delirium.”
Both officers sentenced on Wednesday will face a state trial slated to begin on Oct. 24. Lane is also still awaiting sentencing in that case but was allowed to remain free on bond following his federal sentencing.
