Chauvin faces listening to on violating George Floyd’s civil rights | Black Lives Matter Information

Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of the murder of George Floyd’s death, will appear in federal court for the first time Tuesday to be charged with violating Floyd’s civil rights by knocking the black man with his knee pinned to the sidewalk.

The federal prosecution alleges that Chauvin violated Floyd’s rights when he restrained him face down while handcuffed, did not resist, and gasped.

Chauvin, 45, will videoconference from Minnesota’s maximum security prison in Oak Park Heights, where he is awaiting conviction following his April conviction.

Three other former officials – J Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao – face similar federal charges. Chauvin is also charged in a separate indictment of violating the rights of a 14-year-old boy in 2017.

Floyd, 46, repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe when Chauvin pinned him to the floor. Kueng and Lane helped hold Floyd back – Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back and Lane held Floyd’s legs down.

Thao held back viewers and prevented them from intervening during the more than nine minutes of reluctance captured on viewer video that sparked global protests and calls for police reform.

While all four officers are broadly charged with depriving Floyd of his rights while acting under state authority, attorneys calling Chauvin claim he violated Floyd’s law, free from improper seizure and violence by a police officer to be.

They also claim that he and the others confiscated Floyd when they failed to provide medical care without due process.

Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, argued during the trial that the former officer acted sensibly and that Floyd died from underlying health problems and drug use. He has requested a new trial.

Nelson Chauvin is now representing Chauvin as a court-appointed attorney, according to a court document filed by Al Jazeera on June 1. The court “has determined, based on the information received, that Chauvin is” financially unable to employ a lawyer.

It remains unclear whether the Minneapolis Police Union has stopped paying Chauvin’s legal fees. The union did not immediately respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

“Color of the Law”

To prosecute federal homicides involving the police, prosecutors must believe that an official acted under the “color of the law” or a government agency and deliberately deprived a person of a person’s constitutional rights, a high legal standard.

An accident, poor judgment, or simple negligence does not support federal charges; Prosecutors have to prove that the officers knew what they were doing at that moment, but they did it anyway.

The federal case sends a strong signal about the Justice Department’s priorities. When President Joe Biden was elected, he promised to work to eliminate inequalities in the criminal justice system.

Federal prosecutors have also filed hate crime charges in the death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and the Justice Department has launched a full investigation into police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky.

Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is shown in a combination of police photos after a jury found him guilty at his trial in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [File: Minnesota Department of Corrections/Handout via Reuters]The other indictment against Chauvin alleges that he robbed a then 14-year-old boy, who is Black, of the right to keep himself free from inappropriate violence by holding the teenager by the throat, holding him on the head with a flashlight beat and grabbed his knee around the boy’s neck and upper back while he was handcuffed and made no resistance.

According to a 2017 police report from the encounter reported by the Associated Press, Chauvin wrote that the teen defied arrest and after the teen, whom he was 6’2 ″ (6’2 ”) and about 108kg ( 240lbs) described being handcuffed, Chauvin “used his body weight to pin him to the floor. The boy was bleeding from his ear and took two stitches.

That encounter was one of several mentioned in state court records that prosecutors said Chauvin had previously used neck or head and torso cuffs seven times, dating back to 2014.

Prosecutors said he went too far and “held the restrictions beyond the point where such violence was necessary in the circumstances” in four cases.

Chauvin is unlikely to expect more than 30 years in prison when convicted on June 25. If convicted in federal proceedings, each federal sentence would be served at the same time as its state sentence.

The other former officers are charged with complicity in second degree murder and manslaughter. They are free to borrow and face a state trial in March.