'It's Insulting': Light Sentence for Ex-US Police Officer Involved in Floyd Killing Angers Family
© AP Photo / Nikolas Liepins
Subscribe
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - A US District Court Judge’s decision to sentence one of four police officers involved in the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 to 2½ years has angered members of his family who were demanding the maximum sentence.
"I think that it’s insulting that he didn’t get the maximum amount of time," said Floyd’s brother Philonise during a news conference following the sentence on Thursday.
"I think this whole criminal system just needs to be torn down and rebuilt... If it was me, they would have given me the maximum amount of time."
Judge Paul Magnuson sentenced Thomas Lane to a sentence below the 5.25 years that was at the low end of sentencing guidelines, The Washington Post reported. Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Lane to as much as 6 1/2 years, arguing that Lane, a white man, had a chance to stop his colleague, Derek Chauvin, from kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes but opted not to.
Floyd’s girlfriend Courtney Ross also expressed her displeasure and disappointment at a conference reported by Pauline Le, an Emmy-nominated reporter with WCCO, CBS Minnesota and posted on Twitter.
This combination of photos provided by the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office in Minnesota on Wednesday, June 3, 2020, shows Derek Chauvin, from left, J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao. Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder of George Floyd, a black man who died after being restrained by him and the other Minneapolis police officers on May 25. Kueng, Lane and Thao have been charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin.
© AP Photo / Hennepin County Sheriff's Office
"He didn’t do the right thing. He fell to the pressures of a man that he should have no respect for," said Ross about Lane while answering media questions with Philonise Floyd and Floyd’s nephew Brandon Williams. "And like my brothers here said, if it was anybody else that was part of a crime, they would be held accountable, they would be held to the highest standard. And I believe officers should be held to the higher standard and yet once again, we’re disappointed by the verdict."
On May 25, 2020, 17-year-old Darnella Frazier videotaped former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down on the ground. Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in state court and is serving a 22 1/2-year state sentence simultaneously with a 21-year sentence for federal civil rights charges.
