Officers found guilty in connection to death of George Floyd

Maia Echols, Staff Reporter

George Floyd’s name will go down in history as the impetus for the widespread Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. He was killed by four police officers in Minneapolis after a clerk in a convenience store called the police on Floyd for using a counterfeit $20 bill.

The four officers that killed Floyd and were fired shortly after were Tuo Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and most notably, Derek Chauvin. Derek Chauvin was primarily responsible for the killing of Floyd, as he was most seen in the bodycam footage and had his knee on Floyd’s neck for at least eight minutes and 46 seconds, according to The New York Times. Floyd had said that he couldn’t breathe 25 times.

In June of last year, Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison. The other three officers were convicted of depriving Floyd of his civil rights as well as allowing Chauvin to get away with the murder on Feb. 24. They were all found guilty of these charges after a five-week trial. In addition, they have been found guilty of other crimes (allowing another officer to deprive Floyd of his civil rights and failing to provide aid to Floyd) separate to those that were included in a previous trial.

No sentencing date has yet been set for the officers; however, the maximum sentence that they can receive is life in prison, according to Section 242 under Title 18 of the U.S. Code. John Scarano, Director of Campus Ministry, commented, “You can’t defend bad behavior by saying you were ‘following your training,’ your conscience should be your guide.”