The story appears on

Page A3

April 22, 2021

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » World

Ex-cop found guilty for the murder of Floyd, faces 40 years in prison

After three weeks of testimony, the trial of the former police officer charged with killing George Floyd ended swiftly: barely over a day of jury deliberations, then just minutes for the verdicts to be read — guilty, guilty and guilty — and Derek Chauvin was handcuffed and taken away to prison.

Chauvin, 45, could be sent to prison for decades in a case that triggered worldwide protests and a furious re-examination of racism and policing in the US.

Late yesterday, the US Justice Department launched a sweeping civil investigation into policing practices in Minneapolis following the verdict.

The probe is the first major action of Attorney General Merrick Garland, after President Joe Biden vowed to address systemic racism in the United States. It will consider whether the department engages “in a pattern or practice of using excessive force, including during protests,” he said.

The court verdict set off jubilation mixed with sorrow across Minneapolis and around the United States. Hundreds of people poured into the streets of Minneapolis, some running through traffic with banners. Drivers blared their horns in celebration.

“Today, we are able to breathe again,” Floyd’s younger brother Philonise said at a family news conference where tears streamed down his face as he likened Floyd to the 1955 Mississippi lynching victim Emmett Till, except that this time there were cameras around to show the world what happened.

The jury of six whites and six black or multiracial people came back with its verdict after about 10 hours of deliberations over two days. The now-fired white officer was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

Chauvin’s face was obscured by a COVID-19 mask, and little reaction could be seen beyond his eyes darting around the courtroom. His bail was immediately revoked. Sentencing will be in two months; the most serious charge carries up to 40 years in prison.

Chauvin’s defense team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the verdict but is considered likely to appeal the conviction.

Biden said Floyd’s death was “a murder in full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world” to see systemic racism.

At a park next to the Minneapolis courthouse, a hush fell over a crowd of about 300 as they listened to the verdict on their cellphones. Then a great roar went up, with many people hugging, some shedding tears.

At the intersection where Floyd was pinned down, a crowd chanted, “One down, three to go!” — a reference to the three other fired Minneapolis officers facing trial in August on charges of aiding and abetting murder in Floyd’s death.

The verdict was read in a courthouse ringed with concrete barriers and razor wire and patrolled by National Guard troops, in a city on edge against another round of unrest — not just because of the Chauvin case but because of the deadly police shooting of a young black man, Daunte Wright, in a Minneapolis suburb April 11.

It is unusual for police officers to be prosecuted for killing someone on the job. And convictions are extraordinarily rare. Out of the thousands of deadly police shootings in the US since 2005, fewer than 140 officers have been charged with murder or manslaughter, according to data maintained by Phil Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University. Before Tuesday, only seven were convicted of murder.

Juries often give officers the benefit of the doubt when they claim they had to make split-second, life-or-death decisions. But that was not an argument Chauvin could easily make.




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend