The white ex-cop Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to a further 21 years in prison by a US federal court for violating the civil rights of the African American George Floyd, who he killed. This extends the time that the 46-year-old has to spend in prison anyway, as US media reported from the courtroom in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The former police officer had already been sentenced to 22 years and six months in prison in April 2021 for second-degree murder, among other things, and is already serving this sentence.
The African American Floyd died in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020 as a result of a brutal police operation. Videos of passers-by documented how police officers pushed the unarmed man to the ground. Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for a good nine minutes while Floyd kept begging him to breathe. Floyd’s death shook the United States and triggered a wave of demonstrations against racism and police violence – the largest civil rights protests in the United States in recent decades.
Chauvin pleaded guilty in December last year to willfully depriving Floyd of his constitutional rights. With his guilty plea, he had averted another lengthy trial, but accepted a longer prison sentence. He could now be transferred from solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison in Minnesota to a federal prison with better conditions.