Former police officer involved in killing of George Floyd sentenced to nearly 5 years | ABCNL

we begin with the sentencing of the last former Minneapolis Police Officer involved in the killing of George Floyd two Tau has been sentenced to four years and nine months in prison he was found guilty in May of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter Tao testified that he only served as a human traffic cone when he held back bystanders who gathered at the scene a judge said that his actions were quote unreasonable and he was under duty to stop the officers from using excessive force and trained to provide medical Aid ABC News legal contributor and trial attorney at Hamilton Clark LLP Brian buckmeyer is joining us now for more on this so Brian he's already been sentenced federally now this was a sentence from the state here more than four years this was more than the four years recommended under these Minnesota state guidelines so why is that and what makes these different so good morning I'm just reading the tea leads here but this is what I would make sense to me he is serving the four and a half years federally and the judge here wanted to be very precise in saying as you already quoted he had a duty to render Aid and also stop the officers from using excessive force I think this is a message to other officers that you have a duty to intervene when your brothers and sisters in blue are using Force against the average citizen or just people that they shouldn't be and when you do the math when he does four years nine months sorry we use months so it's 57 months he serves two-thirds of that so he'll get out in about three years and two months that's a very close calculation in time with the federal sentence so I think they're trying to run them together so he gets out around the same time and then does the last third or the last 19 months in the state charge on parole and where will he serve his sentence officers and we've heard from the other three officers involved in the death of George Floyd as well they're trying to serve their charges in federal prison for a number of reasons for them personally typically has better Services better amenities but they're also going to make the argument that as former officers a lot of the people in state prison are the ones that they may have arrested or people who like them have arrested and it's not a safe place for them so they're going to have these two sentences try to run at the same time or concurrently and then serve that time in federal prison rather than state all right ABC News legal contributor Brian buckmeyer our thanks to you hi everyone George Stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the ABC News YouTube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch live event coverage click on the right over here to subscribe to our Channel and don't forget to download the ABC News app for breaking news alerts thanks for watching

Channel: ABC News

Views: 73,234

Keywords: Case, Court, Floyd, George, Oficer, Police, Sentencing, abc, abcnl, news, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-102074011

Id: nkEqVcV4B1g

Length: 2min 41sec (161 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 07 2023