The last former Minneapolis police officer convicted for his role in the killing of George Floyd has been sentenced to four years and nine months behind bars.
Tou Thao did not show repentance or admit any wrongdoing as he was sentenced on Monday for aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.
Thao held back concerned bystanders as white ex-officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for 9.5 minutes while he pleaded for his life on May 25, 2020.
A bystander’s video captured Floyd, who is Black, saying “I can’t breathe.” His murder sparked protests worldwide and highlighted police brutality and racism in the US.
At his sentencing hearing, Thao said he never intended to hurt anyone that day.
He spoke about his growth as a Christian during his 340 days behind bars but denied any responsibility for Floyd’s death.
“I did not commit these crimes,” Thao said. “My conscience is clear. I will not be a Judas nor join a mob in self-preservation or betray my God.”
Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill said he would have liked to have heard some kind of repentance from Thao on Monday.
“After three years of reflection, I was hoping for a little more remorse, regret, acknowledgement of some responsibility — and less preaching,” he said.
Thao’s lawyer, Robert Paule, who called Thao “a good and decent man with a family” in court, said afterward that they will appeal in both the state and federal cases.
Assistant Attorney General Erin Eldridge said during the hearing that Floyd’s final words “reverberated across the globe.”
“George Floyd narrated his own death over the course of a restraint that lasted more than nine long minutes until he lost consciousness, stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating,” she said.
Thao facilitated Floyd’s death, she said, because he “stood by and allowed it to happen” and stopped others from helping the dying man, including a Minneapolis firefighter who was a trained emergency medical technician and could have performed CPR on him.
“He knew better, and he was trained to do better,” Ms Eldridge said.
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In his ruling that Thao was guilty, Judge Cahill said Thao’s actions separated Chauvin and two other former officers from the crowd, allowing his colleagues to continue restraining Floyd and preventing bystanders from providing medical aid.
“There is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Thao’s actions were objectively unreasonable from the perspective of a reasonable police officer, when viewed under the totality of the circumstances,” he wrote.
He concluded: “Thao’s actions were even more unreasonable in light of the fact that he was under a duty to intervene to stop the other officers’ excessive use of force and was trained to render medical aid.”
Thao had rejected a plea bargain on the state charge, saying “it would be lying” to plead guilty when he didn’t think he was in the wrong.
He instead agreed to let Cahill decide the case based on evidence from Chauvin’s 2021 murder trial and the federal civil rights trial in 2022 of Thao and former officers Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng. That trial in federal court ended in convictions for all three.
Chauvin pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges instead of going to trial a second time, though he plans an appeal of his state conviction to the US Supreme Court.
Lane and Kueng pleaded guilty to state charges of aiding and abetting manslaughter.
Lane and Kueng received three and 3.5-year state sentences respectively, which they are serving concurrently with their federal sentences of 2.5 years and three years.
Thao is Hmong American, while Kueng is Black and Lane is white.
