Thomas Lane is jailed for two and a half years
(Picture: AP)A former police officer has been jailed for two-and-a-half years for violating George Floyd’s civil rights.
Thomas Lane, who is white, held the legs of Mr Floyd, who is black, while Officer Derek Chauvin pinned Mr Floyd’s neck with his knee for nearly nine and a half minutes on May 25, 2020.
Video footage of Floyd pleading that he could not breathe before his death sparked protests in Minneapolis and around the world.
Former Minneapolis police officer Lane was convicted earlier this year of depriving Floyd of his right to medical care.
Judge Paul Magnuson called his role in the restraint that killed Floyd “a very serious offense in which a life was lost”.
The judge handed down a sentence slightly more than the 27 months Lane’s attorney had asked for while prosecutors had asked for at least five years and a quarter in prison.
“It’s terrible,” one of George Floyd’s brothers, Philonise Floyd, told reporters after the sentencing.
“This whole criminal system needs to be torn down and rebuilt.”
Magnuson told Lane: “The fact that you did not get up and remove Mr. Chauvin when Mr. Floyd became unconscious is a violation of the law.”
But he also considered 145 letters he said he had received supporting Lane and said he had never received so many on behalf of a defendant.
Lane will serve his sentence at the federal prison in Duluth, a minimum-security facility about two and a half from the Minneapolis area.
Chauvin, who was filmed kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, is currently serving a 22-and-a-half-year sentence behind bars.
He was convicted of second-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter and a federal civil rights charge.
Two other officers, J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao who were present during the murder, were convicted of violating Floyd’s civil rights.
They deprived Floyd of his right to medical care and failed to intervene to stop Chauvin. The pair will be sentenced later.
Thao and Kueng are also charged with state counts of aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
They have turned down plea deals and are scheduled to go to trial on those charges on October 24.
