Derek Chauvin has faced his judgement; 22.5 years in prison for his conviction in the killing of George Floyd.
Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin has been sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison in the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
Prosecutors had asked for a 30 year sentence, and Chauvin’s attorney asked for probation and time served. Chauvin was convicted in April of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
Technically, Chauvin faced up to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder and up to 10 years for manslaughter.
However, Chauvin has no prior criminal record. State guidelines say that for such a person, the presumptive sentence for both second-degree and third-degree murder is 12 1/2 years. The judge was given discretion to hand down a sentence between 10 years and eight months and 15 years for each.
Second-degree manslaughter carries a presumptive sentence of four years for someone with no record, according to the guidelines. The judge’s discretion ranged from three years and five months to four years and eight months.
The reaction to the sentencing will be strong, but was clearly well within the guidelines the judge was working with. Legal observers think in practice Chauvin will serve somewhere around 15 years in prison, meaning he potentially would be upwards of 60 when coming up for parole.
So, was this justice? That’s the question folks will ask and search for an answer too. Derek Chauvin sentenced to 22.5 years in prison doesn’t in and of itself do much outside of Derek Chauvin. Police reform, race relations, and a host of other issues that have come to the fore since those videos sparked such outrage sadly don’t seem to be any closer to getting better than they did a year ago. 22.5 years for Chauvin isn’t a slap on the wrist, nor is it the life sentence many folks called for. There is still the pending federal indictment, so what happens to Derek Chauvin is still up in the air despite this sentencing.
Also up in the air is the hopes of many that, more than a year after his death on video, the death of George Floyd was going to spark real, meaningful change. Those videos were so jarring to the wider world that folks couldn’t help but conclude something very wrong had happened in front of Cup Foods. The Derek Chauvin sentencing will land differently with different people, but it surely won’t be anything close to the closure so many need, with so little having been resolved since. Which, sadly, means we are doomed to repeat this cycle of wrong, outrage, debate, and strife again, the next shocking thing bringing it to the fore again. God forbid.
We never seem to learn. Probably why we have so little justice when we so desperately need it.
But maybe next time…
When I was a kid, people made jokes about how murder would get you 20 years. “Hey, sometimes that’s a bargain”, they’d joke.
Chauvin did this under color of law.
That’s, apparently, worth an extra 2.5 years. (That’s pretty darned paltry.)Report
I think median for this crime is 12.5 years. So he got an extra 10.Report
Appropriate to note that today, Tamir Rice would have been 19 years old, but will, in 22 years time, still be dead at the hands of a murderous police officer.Report
911 operator who didn’t forward the “probably a child” and “probably a fake gun” info to the cops was suspended for 8 days.
Cop was fired for stuff in theory unrelated but in practice hiding that he wasn’t competent.
Prosecutor lost an election.
Feds said this last December they’re not going to do anything.
Not a lot of punishment in there. In terms of system problems I’d say the DA preventing it from reaching a jury was biggest deal. I find it hard to believe he’d have been convicted but it seems like something that should have been played out.Report
Punishment is one of many parts of Justice. This will be most of his life gone, which he deserves. It’s on the hard side of the recommendations which seems good to me.Report
I concur. I don’t get the disappointment.Report
No one who knows anything about prison would dismiss 20-plus years as “paltry.”Report
I’m dismissing an extra 2.5 years for committing murder under color of law as paltry.
20 years was, to my limited knowledge, what one could expect for being convicted of murder.Report
Standard sentence for second-degree murder in Minnesota is about ten years. The judge hammered him.Report
Only 10 years? Huh.
Well, 12.5 on top of that seems like an appropriate penalty for doing what he did under color of law.Report
I’ll leave aside much discussion of whether he got hammered ENOUGH – I’m pleasantly surprised they they got him at ALL even with such damning evidence, so it seems to me he got nailed to the wall about as well as we could have hoped.
I just want to comment, again, that modern reality has GOT to get better writers. “Chauvin” for a character name? Are you kidding me? On the nose, much?Report