A federal grand jury has indicted four former Minneapolis officers in connection with George Floyd’s death.
As reported on CNN, the former cops violated Floyd’s constitutional rights. According to court documents filed in federal court in Minnesota, Derrick Chauvin “deprived Floyd of the right to be free from “unreasonable seizure. This includes the right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a police officer.” Chauvin was convicted last month on state murder charges.
According to the indictment, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng were also charged with their failure to intervene in Chauvin’s use of unreasonable force. Chauvin, Thao, Kueng, and the fourth officer, Thomas Lane, all face a charge for failing to give Floyd medical aid. The document also says the former officers saw Floyd lying on the ground in need of medical care and “willfully failed to aid Floyd thereby acting with deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of harm to Floyd.”
The article also says Chauvin was charged in a separate indictment related to a 2017 incident in which he allegedly used unreasonable force on a Minneapolis 14-year-old.
On May 4, Chauvin’s attorney Eric Nelson filed a motion asking for a new trial. One reason is that one of the jurors who convicted Chauvin participated in a protest last summer. Nelson filed the motion “stating that the court abused its discretion for failing to sequester the jury, denying the defense a new trial, and denying to change the venue.”