In May 2020, an additional prison sentence was handed down to a former police officer involved in an incident in which a white police officer arrested and killed a black man, George Floyd, by crushing him with his knee.
According to US media including the New York Times (NYT) on the 7th, Judge Peter Cahill of the Hennepin County Court in Minnesota sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Tu Tao to four years and nine months in prison for aiding and abetting murder.
Thao pleaded not guilty, claiming that Derek Chauvin was merely controlling the onlookers at the scene during the nine-and-a-half minutes when former police officer Derek Chauvin held his knee on Floyd’s neck, but the judge did not accept it.
Judge Cahill determined that Thao’s conduct isolated Chauvin and two other officers from the crowd, allowing Chauvin to continue overpowering Floyd. He also concluded that he had even blocked access by first responders, rendering him unable to receive medical attention.
“There is evidence that Thao’s actions are objectively unreasonable from the point of view of a reasonable police officer,” Judge Cahill said.
Tao was sentenced to three and a half years in prison by a federal court in July of last year for allegedly violating Floyd’s constitutional rights and is currently serving his sentence. The state court’s prison sentence against Thao will be executed concurrently with the federal court’s sentence.
Unlike other police officers who abetted the case who admitted guilt and chose to receive a reduced sentence, Thao chose a formal trial, saying, “To admit guilt is to make a false confession and sin.”
With the sentencing of Tao on this day, all first-instance trials related to the police involved in the Floyd case were concluded. Derek Chauvin, the senior officer who had previously choked Floyd by choking him, was found guilty by a Hennepin County jury in April 2021 on all counts of second-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter, and third-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 22 years in prison.
The George Floyd case is an incident in May 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Floyd, a black man, was crushed to death while being arrested by the police.
Controversy over the excessive suppression arose, triggering large-scale racist protests and riots across the United States.