Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison Friday.
Chauvin was convicted earlier this year of the second-degree unintentional murder of George Floyd, who was handcuffed facedown on the ground while Chauvin kneeled on his throat during an arrest.
The case was a catalyst for a national wave of protests against police brutality and institutional racism.
The sentence exceeds the Minnesota sentencing guideline range of 10 years and eight months to 15 years for the crime.
Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill rejected a defense request for probation, citing reasons including “because a probationary sentence would be disproportionate and understate the severity of Mr. Chauvin’s offense.”
“Mr. Chauvin’s continuing insistence that he believed ‘he was simply performing his lawful duty in assisting other officers in the arrest of George Floyd’ and was acting “in good faith reliance [on] his own experience as a police officer and the training he had received… was rejected by every supervisory and training officer of the Minneapolis Police Department who testified at trial as well as by the jury,” Cahill wrote in a 22-page memorandum.
The judge said the harsher sentence was warranted because Chauvin “abused his position of trust or authority” and treated Floyd with “particular cruelty.”
