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Former Minneapolis police officers Tou Tao (left) and Alexander Kueng in St. Paul, Minnesota last month. Mr Tao, Mr Kueng and Thomas Lane were convicted Thursday of federal crimes. Photo by … Kerem Yousel / Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
ST. PAUL, Minnesota. On Thursday, three former Minneapolis police officers were found guilty of federal crimes for not intervening when another officer killed George Floyd by pressing his knee to his neck for more than nine minutes.
This case was an extremely rare example of officers being prosecuted by the Department of Justice for their inaction while another officer used excessive force. The verdicts signal to police departments across America that juries may become more inclined to convict not only officers who kill people on the job, but also those who watch them do it.
A federal jury determined that the officers were Tou Tao, 36; J. Alexander Kueng, 28; and Thomas Lane, 38, — willfully violated Mr Floyd’s constitutional rights by failing to provide him with medical attention when he lost his pulse, and that two of them were also guilty of not intervening to prevent fellow officer Derek Chauvin from balking knee in Mr Floyd. Neck Floyd.
Mr Kueng and Mr Lane both helped Mr Chauvin restrain Mr Floyd as he was handcuffed face down on the sidewalk. Mr. Tao stood nearby, driving away passers-by. Mr Chauvin was convicted of murder last year and sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison.
The convictions were a significant victory for the Justice Department, which under the Biden administration has pledged to more aggressively pursue civil rights violations. This came just days after federal prosecutors secured convictions for hate crimes against three white men in Georgia for assassination of Ahmad Arberya black man they pursued and killed.
Judge Paul A. Magnuson said he would allow the three men to remain free on bail until a sentencing hearing, which has yet to be scheduled.
Judge Magnuson has broad powers to impose punishment and can sentence officers to prison terms ranging from one year to life in prison. They continue to face state charges of aiding and abetting murder and are scheduled to go to trial this year. Federal prosecutors filed charges against Mr. Chauvin along with three other officers, but in December he reached a plea agreement with the Justice Department that prosecutors said they would seek a 25-year prison sentence.
Legal experts and racial justice activists have followed the case closely, saying it could have more repercussions for police than even Mr. Chauvin’s murder conviction. Experts say the case was rooted in a more common problem than a single officer’s act of violence: officers’ tendency to stay on the sidelines when they witness another officer committing a crime.
The jury’s decision, which came after approximately 13 hours of deliberation and after a month-long trial, suggests that they agreed with the prosecution’s arguments, that the officers knew at the time that Mr Floyd was in serious health and that Mr Chauvin was breaking down. . law. The verdict also rejected the argument that was made in each of the three defense arguments: that the officers trusted Mr. Chauvin, the senior officer at the scene, and therefore did not know that what he was doing was illegal.
According to Christy E. Lopez, professor at Georgetown University Law Center, the case is considered the first time the federal government has accused police officers of failing to intervene with a higher-ranking officer who used excessive force. Ms. Lopez studied case law on the matter with a team of researchers and was unable to find a similar prosecution. She has worked with police departments to train officers in their constitutional duty to intervene when they see colleagues breaking the law.
She said convictions could significantly change the culture of law enforcement, forcing agencies to make sure officers are properly trained and doing their jobs.
“It forces you to go beyond the rotten apple narrative,” Ms. Lopez said. She added, “Now you’re thinking, ‘Oh, everyone on stage played a part in this.’ This shifts the entire narrative from misconduct associated only with actions to misconduct also associated with acts of inaction.”
Robert Paul, Mr. Tao’s lawyer, told jurors during his closing statement, “Just because something has a tragic end doesn’t mean it’s a crime.”
Mr. Tao, a veteran officer who was Mr. Chauvin’s partner, held back the crowd while Mr. Lane and Mr. Kueng, both recruits, tried to arrest Mr. Floyd after a salesman in convenience store said he used a fake. 20 dollar bill to buy cigarettes.
All three officers, who, along with Mr. Chauvin, were fired the day after the assassination, were charged with one count of failure to provide medical care. Mr. Kueng and Mr. Tao were also charged with failing to intervene and stop Mr. Chauvin’s use of force; Mr Lane, who twice asked Mr Chauvin if they should turn Mr Floyd on his side so he can breathe easier, has not faced that accusation.
The 12 jurors who decided the case were drawn from all over Minnesota, because the trial was on federal crimes, and all 12 turned out to be white. This contrasted with the more racially diverse jury, drawn from the Minneapolis area, which convicted Mr. Chauvin and Kimberly Potter, a white officer in suburban Minneapolis who shot a black man after mistakenly drawing his gun instead of a stun gun during a traffic stop.
During the trial, prosecutors called for testimony from doctors, police officers, bystanders who had witnessed the murder, and a paramedic who arrived at the scene and stated that he believed Mr Floyd was already dead. Prosecutors relied on mountains of video evidence—from bystanders, from officers’ body cameras, from city surveillance cameras—that produced harrowing second-by-second footage of the murder.
One of the most important witnesses was Inspector Cathy Blackwell, a Minneapolis police officer who was previously in charge of training. She testified for three days about training recruits in the proper use of force and their constitutional duty to intervene when they see other officers using excessive force.
But defense attorneys attacked Inspector Blackwell, arguing that the department had failed to train officers to recognize when they were required to intervene, saying the discussion was formal and “little more than a word in PowerPoint.”
Under cross-examination, Thomas Plunkett, Mr Kuang’s lawyer, played a recording of Al Pacino’s fiery speech as a football coach in “Any Sunday,” a clip that was shown to police recruits. academy. Mr Plunkett said he believed the department was promoting a “cops against the world” mentality.
The defense also tried to focus jurors on the hierarchical and paramilitary aspects of police culture—how recruits are taught to obey their superiors and follow orders without question.
Unlike Mr. Chauvin, who did not testify at the trial, each of the three officers spoke in his defense, and they all stated that, in their opinion, Mr. Chauvin, as a senior officer, was responsible and knew what he was doing . They also said they would not admit that Mr Floyd was in a medical emergency.
“I think I would trust a 19-year-old veteran with this,” Mr. Tao said. Mr. Kueng, who had Mr. Chauvin as one of his field training officers, said: “He was my senior officer and I trusted his advice.”
To make things easier for the jury, prosecutors often used the phrase “in your custody, in your care” to describe the duty of officers to protect a detained suspect.
Also important in this case was a group of ordinary citizens, young and old, who, by force of circumstances, witnessed a murder near a convenience store in South Minneapolis almost two years ago.
Among them was Darnella Frazier, a teenager who was shopping for snacks with her young cousin and took out her cell phone to film officers wrestling on the ground with Mr Floyd. Her video went viral, spread around the world and drew millions to the streets to protest police brutality and racial injustice.
George Perry Floyd, 46, was a black security guard and former rapper who lost his job due to the coronavirus pandemic. Mr Chauvin and Mr Lane are white Mr Tao is an Asian American. as well as Mr Kueng black.
Throughout the trial, defense lawyers argued that the crowd members, who told the police over and over again that they were killing Mr Floyd and that he was struggling to breathe, distracted the police and possibly threatened them.
But prosecutors attempted to portray the onlookers’ actions as a powerful counterpoint to what the officers were doing, arguing that if a small crowd of ordinary citizens could clearly see that Mr Floyd was facing a major medical emergency, then three well-trained police officers certainly should have.
“You just need good old common sense,” Attorney Manda Sertich told the jury in her closing remarks. “And you just need good old human decency.”
The trial and its outcome marked another milestone in nearly two years of upheaval and trauma in the Twin Cities region, with a seemingly endless number of overlapping crises centered on the burning issues of police brutality and racial injustice.
The fatal shooting of Ms. Potter at Daunt Wright, a 20-year-old man who was on his way to get his car washed, occurred last April when Mr. Chauvin went to trial. During this trial, an officer from Minneapolis shot Amir Locke, a black man, when police conducted an unprecedented raid on an apartment building. The man the police were looking for, Mr. Locke’s cousin, was not at the apartment at the time of the raid, and the episode plunged the city further into turmoil, with more protests and calls for the mayor’s resignation.
During the four weeks of the trial, family members of Mr Floyd and his girlfriend Courtney Ross, who testified at Mr Chauvin’s trial, were frequently seen in the court gallery.
The trial of Mr. Kuang, Mr. Lane and Mr. Tao on charges of aiding and abetting murder by the state is scheduled for June. During the federal trial this week, the state attorneys who secured Mr. Chauvin’s conviction and are leading the state’s case against three other officers were seen in the audience and taking notes.
— Tim Arango, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Jay Center