Ex-officer admits violating Floyd’s rights
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Derek Chauvin pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal charge that he used his position as a Minneapolis police officer to violate George Floyd’s constitutional rights, a move expected to extend Chauvin’s time in prison beyond a decadeslong state sentence for murdering Floyd.
Chauvin, 45, pleaded guilty in the U.S. courthouse in St. Paul. Since a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder in April, he has been held in solitary confinement in Minnesota’s only maximum-security prison, where he is allowed out of his 10-foot-by-10-foot cell for one hour a day.
A federal prosecutor said in court that the government had reached a plea deal with Chauvin under which prosecutors would seek to have him imprisoned for 25 years. That sentence would run concurrently with his state sentence, meaning it would lengthen Chauvin’s prison term by about 2 ½ years.
Under the proposed sentence and rules about credit for good behavior, the earliest Chauvin would be released from prison would likely be around 2042, when he would be in his mid-60s. The sentence will ultimately be up to a judge at a later hearing.
The terms of the plea agreement call for Chauvin to serve his time in a federal prison, which is generally considered to be safer and could separate Chauvin from prisoners he may have arrested. The agreement would also prohibit Chauvin, who was fired from the Minneapolis Police Department one day after Floyd’s death, from ever working as a police officer again.
Chauvin, who is white, admitted in court that he had violated the constitutional right of Floyd to be free from unreasonable seizures, which include unreasonable force by a police officer. Chauvin knelt on the neck of Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, for 9 ½ minutes in May 2020 as he lay handcuffed, face down on a South Minneapolis street corner.
Chauvin also pleaded guilty Wednesday to another federal charge of violating the civil rights of a 14-year-old boy in 2017 and agreed that he had held the boy by the throat, struck him in the head with a flashlight and pressed his knee on the neck of the teenager, who is Black, without justification.
Federal prosecutors have charged three other officers with violating Floyd’s civil rights in a case that is expected to go to trial in January.