Former Minneapolis police officers J Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao have each been sentenced to more than three years in federal prison for violating George Floyd’s civil rights during his Memorial Day 2020 murder.
Both officers were convicted in February on two civil rights violations of failing to provide Floyd with medical aid and failing to stop their colleague Derek Chauvin from murdering him as he pinned the Black man to the ground by the neck until he died.
On Wednesday, Kueng was sentenced to 36 months while Thao was sentenced to 42 months in federal prison - amounting to three and 3.5 years respectively.
US District Judge Paul Magnuson cited Thao’s significantly greater level of experience in law enforcement as a reason for delivering a harsher sentence. Kueng had been on the job only a handful of days before Floyd’s fatal arrest over a $20 counterfeit bill, Thao was a veteran officer of eight years.
Wednesday’s sentencing made the pair the last of all four officers involved in Floyd’s death to learn of their fates in federal court – coming more than two years on from the murder that sparked protests nationwide and renewed calls for racial justice.
Last week, their fellow officer Thomas Lane was sentenced to 2.5 years on one count of violating Floyd’s civil rights – a sentence that Floyd’s brother Philonise Floyd slammed as “insulting”.
Weeks earlier, convicted murderer Chauvin received a sentence of 21 years after he pleaded guilty to the civil rights charges, allowing him to avoid trial in exchange for moving from a high-security state prison to a safer, comfier federal facility.
In court on Wednesday, Judge Magnuson recommended both Kueng and Thao serve their sentences in a federal facility in either Duluth, Minnesota, or in Yankton, South Dakota.
They will also each serve two years under supervision on their release. They must surrender to US Marshals on 4 October.
The judge first sentenced Kueng to three years on each of his two counts, ordering him to serve them concurrently.
In handing down the sentence, he said Kueng should have intervened that day but deserved leniency as he was raised in a difficult neighbourhood and wanted to become a “peaceful, helpful member of your community”.
He also cited his lack of experience on the job, saying “you were truly a rookie officer”.
Prosecutors had argued his lack of experience was not an excuse, saying he “didn’t say a word – not one word” to try to stop Floyd’s murder.
Prior to his sentencing, Floyd’s second cousin Sabrina Montgomery addressed the court, condemning the sentences given to Lane and Chauvin and urging the judge to give Kueng and Thao the harshest possible sentence.
Floyd’s girlfriend Courteney Ross also delivered a victim impact statement where she called the 46-year-old the “love of my life” and addressed Kueng directly about his part in his killing.
She told the officer that he failed in his actions that day and called on him to “stand for something” on his release from prison.
Kueng declined to make a statement to the court.
Ms Ross had harsher words for Thao as she spoke ahead of his sentencing, condemning his remarks during her boyfriend’s murder and telling him to think of him when he is “scared” in his prison cell.
“As you watched my love being suffocated under the knee of your co-officer, I will never forget you saying to the crowd of onlookers, ‘This is why you don’t do drugs,’” she told him. “No one deserves to be treated as less.”
She added: “I had seen my big strong, muscular man be shaken and sad when he was in a small space. He wasn’t trying to resist that day, he was just so scared. When you get scared in that small prison cell, remember how Floyd felt.”
Thao gave a 20-minute statement to the court, in which he reeled off quotes from the Bible and spoke about turning to religion following his arrest.
“When I walked into that jail cell, I grabbed a Bible, and I searched for it, I searched for an answer to all this wickedness, and I couldn’t find it,” he said.
When he took the stand at his trial in February, Thao had snapped at prosecutors when questioned why he didn’t try to stop Chauvin and sought to push the blame onto the senior-most officer. “I think I would trust a 19-year veteran to figure it out,” he said.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Kueng and Thao to less than Chauvin but “substantially” more than Lane – after Judge Magnuson said that Lane played a “minimal role” in Floyd’s fatal arrest and called the shamed officer a person of “outstanding character” at his sentencing.
Thao’s attorney asked the judge to sentence him to two years while the request from Kueng’s attorney was unclear as it was sealed.
Judge Magnuson had been expected to go easy on the two officers after he sided with them over their sentencing guidelines last week.
In a court appearance on Friday, the federal judge agreed that the sentences for the disgraced officers should be calculated using the crime of involuntary manslaughter, rather than second-degree murder.
This paved the way for significantly less prison time with a sentencing range of 4.25 to 5.25 years. The sentences handed down on Wednesday fell even shorter than this range.
The federal judge wrote that both Kueng and Thao made a “tragic misdiagnosis in their assessment of Mr Floyd”, saying that they both genuinely believed the 46-year-old was suffering from a drug overdose and widely disputed condition known as “excited delirium”.
Lane, Kueng and Thao stood trial together on federal civil rights charges back in February.
All three were convicted of one count of depriving Floyd of his civil rights by failing to provide him with medical care as he was pinned under Chauvin’s knee for nine and a half minutes begging for air and pleading “I can’t breathe”.
Kueng and Thao – who are still awaiting a separate state trial – were also convicted of depriving Floyd of his civil rights by failing to intervene to stop Chauvin’s unreasonable use of force.
Kueng pinned down Mr Floyd’s back, Lane held down his legs and Thao kept a crowd of bystanders back and stopped them intervening.
Both Kueng and Lane had been on the job for a matter of days while Thao was an eight year veteran of the Minneapolis Police Department.
Lane was only charged and convicted on one count as he was heard on bodycam footage asking the other officers twice if they should turn Floyd over into a different position.
The verdict came after a month-long trial where jurors heard how the three officers “chose to do nothing” to try to stop Chauvin or to try to save the life of the Black man as he lay dying under Chauvin’s knee.
Kueng and Thao are also awaiting trial on state charges of aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
The state trial has been delayed multiple times to date and is now scheduled to begin in October.
Lane has avoided the state trial after he reached a plea deal with prosecutors back in May.
Under the terms of the deal, he pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in exchange for the charge of aiding and abetting second-degree murder being dropped. He will be sentenced in state court on 21 September.
Chauvin meanwhile is currently waiting to be moved to federal prison after he was sentenced to 21 years in early July.
The federal sentence is to be served concurrently with his state sentence of 22-and-a-half years, after he was convicted of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter at his state trial back in April 2021.
Since then, he has been held behind bars at Minnesota’s maximum security prison at Oak Park Heights.
