The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced that former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane, 39, has been handed a 30-month sentence in federal prison for depriving George Floyd of his constitutional rights.
George Floyd was a black man who was murdered by a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, in Minneapolis during an arrest stemming from the suspicion that Floyd may have used a counterfeit $20 bill on May 25, 2020.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Lane was sentenced on July 21, following a five-week trial. Lane saw Floyd restrained in police custody, in clear need of medical assistance and he willfully failed to help, actions that ultimately contributed to bodily injury and Floyd's death. For his actions, a St. Paul, Minnesota, federal jury found him guilty of depriving Floyd of his constitutional right to be free from a police officer’s deliberate indifference to serious medical needs.
Thomas Lane
| Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office
“The tragic death of George Floyd makes clear the fatal consequences that can result from a police officer’s failure to intervene to protect people in their custody,” Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Kristen Clarke said, according to the Department of Justice. “Had this defendant and other officers on the scene with (former Minneapolis police officer) Derek Chauvin taken simple steps, George Floyd would be alive today. This sentence should send a message that protecting people in custody is the affirmative duty and obligation of every law enforcement officer, regardless of one’s rank or seniority.”
The jury also found former Minneapolis Police Department officers, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng, guilty of depriving Floyd of his constitutional right to be free from an officer’s unreasonable force. The two officers had willfully failed to stop Chauvin from using unreasonable force against Floyd, which ultimately resulted in Floyd's injury and death. Thao and Kueng are still awaiting a sentencing hearing.
On July 7, Chauvin was sentenced to 252 months in prison for depriving Floyd and a then-14-year-old child of their constitutional rights in violation of the same federal statute.
