The former police officer who kept his knee on the throat of George Floyd as he lay dying has finally spoken about the killing in a documentary that was just released. In it, he says that he feels “the whole trial, including sentencing, was a sham.”
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin essentially blamed the paramedics for the killing, according to NBC Montana. He made the statements in a documentary titled “The Fall of Minneapolis.” He says Floyd died because there was a delayed response from EMS after they were summoned to the scene.
In the documentary, he says, “The EMS and Minneapolis Fire response was not normal. Normally, both those resources are sent, they arrive in short time, especially on a Code 3 situation. In this case, Minneapolis Fire took 20-plus minutes to arrive, and their station is eight blocks away.”
He uses that excuse to justify keeping his knee on Floyd’s neck. He expressed that the “move” he used was called a “maximal restraint technique that is typically used when a suspect is resisting arrest,” he says. He believes it was not introduced into the trial, which would have exonerated him.
“At the end of the day, the whole trial, including sentencing, was a sham,” Chauvin said.
Chauvin’s attorneys filed a motion
to overturn the federal conviction he pled guilty to, according to The StarTribuneF. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected it with no explanation. In the filing, attorneys stated that the former police officer would not have pleaded guilty in the federal case if his former attorney, Eric Nelson, had told Chauvin that a pathologist would have testified that Chauvin wasn’t the reason Floyd died. There was no mention of paramedics in the filing.Chauvin was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for violating the civil rights of Floyd, who died on May 25, 2020. Chauvin admitted that he kept his knee on Floyd’s neck, even after he stopped moving, which resulted in Floyd’s death. He admitted to willfully depriving Floyd of his right to be free from unreasonable seizure, including unreasonable force by a police officer.
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