Judge Peter Cahill read the sentence in a session held in the Hennepin County courthouse, where Chauvin was found guilty in April.
will not return to george floyd to his loved ones and a family “forever broken”. He will not return it to Gianna, the seven-year-old girl who remembered this Friday in a recorded video broadcast in a Minneapolis court that she asks about her father “all the time” and sighed; “I want to play with himhave fun, get on a plane…” It is not for some even what really does justice and may be just a footnote in a turbulent and violent history of lethal use of force by authority against minorities. In any case, the US legal system has spoken. Derek Chauvin, the former white police officer convicted of Floyd’s murder on May 25 last year, was sentenced this Friday to 22 and a half years in prison..
Two months after a popular jury found Chauvin guilty of the three charges he faced after a six-week trial and almost 10 hours of deliberation, Judge Peter Cahill has handed down the sentence for the most serious of them, second degree murder. It was not the highest that could be imposed according to state guidelines (30 years) but it is high and sends Chauvin, 45, to a prison that has not been made public at the moment and from which, with good behavior , could be paroled in 15 years about. In addition, an appeal from the defense is expected from him.
emotional moments
The view, like the judgment, has been very emotional and has been broadcast live from the judicial facilities of Hennepin County, where Chauvin, before knowing his sentence, has listened to the interventions of Gianna (by video) and other relatives of Floyd, the interventions of the prosecution, from which the police have been thanked for “not hid behind the blue wall” and testified against his former partner, but also that of his defense and that of his mother, Carolyn Pawlenty. She is she, in an intervention fighting back tears, has denied that her son is racist. “He is a good man (…) When they sentence him, they will also be sentencing me,” he said.
As expected given that a federal case is pending and because it could affect potential appeals, Chauvin has decided not to make a formal statement but has made a few words to directly show his “condolences to the Floyd family”. Cryptically, he has also assured that “information of interest” will come to light in the future, which, he said, he hopes “will give them some peace”.
Aggravating factors
Judge Cahill had rejected this Friday the request of Eric Nelson, the ex-police’s defense attorney, for a new trial to be held and for the conduct of one of the jurors to be investigated. When making his decision, the magistrate also has ignored defense pleas for leniencywho has tried to appeal to Chauvin’s lack of criminal history (although in his 19 years in the force he has accumulated 22 complaints or internal investigations), has denounced that he is at special risk in prison (he has spent the last two months virtually isolated in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison) and has defined it as a product of “a broken system.
Cahill has instead made his decision after agreeing to consider four aggravating factors of the five presented by the prosecution when seeking a 30-year sentence: that Chauvin abused his position of authority and trustthe cruelty particular to his action. The judge has also explained that his sentence is not based “on emotion or sympathy” but has wanted to recognize the “deep and tremendous pain“, especially from Floyd’s family.
The other aggravating factors raised by the prosecution is that Chauvin committed the crime along with three other agents and to kill Floyd, keeping his knee on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds windingwhen there was minors present.
If one of those minors, the teenager Darnella Frazier, had not recorded the video that has earned her an unprecedented mention at the Pulitzer Prizes, the world would not have witnessed the horror, the United States possibly would not have experienced the largest wave of protests and woken up from social conscience about its racial injustices in decades and the outcome of the case could well have been different.
The debate on the police, unresolved
What was decided in Minneapolis does not change is the deep and unresolved debate on the future of the police in the US. Although Floyd’s case gave rise to a movement that calls for defund the police and redirect it to mental health or social programs and community, the political winds are now blowing in the opposite direction, especially given the rise in gun murders and other violent crimes that began during the pandemic.
This week the president Joe Biden delivered a speech clearly advocating increasing police funding rather than reducing it and encouraged states to use federal pandemic relief funds to bolster their departments. And in the Democratic primaries for mayor of New York, Eric Adams, a former police officer who has made the message of a strong hand and resounding opposition to the movement to cut the police budget the central axis, and triumphant, of his campaign has been placed as leader.
reactions
In Minneapolis, however, other political leaders continue to advocate for change. In a press conference, the attorney general of the state of Minnesota, Democrat Keith Ellison, assured that “sentence is not enough“. “It is not justice but it is another moment of real accountability on the road to justice,” he said.
Floyd’s family has also celebrated it as a step. “The judgment shows that police brutality issues are finally being taken seriously“, declared in a statement Bridget Floyd, sister of the murdered man and one of the relatives who have launched the George Floyd Memorial Foundation. “However, we have a long way to go and many changes to make before black people and people of color finally feel like they are treated fairly and humanely by law enforcement in this country.”