Bill Barr stopped George Floyd’s killer from pleading guilty, report says

Protests gripped the country for days after the killing as protesters called for accountability

Trump administration attorney general Bill Barr reportedly rejected a plea deal that would’ve sent the police officer accused of murdering George Floyd to prison for 10 years.

Shortly after the killing in May, Derek Chauvin, the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for minutes on end, was fired from the Minneapolis Police Department and apparently believed there was no way he could beat the case against him.

He reportedly agreed to plead guilty to third-degree murder charges and go to federal prison if he avoided civil rights charges.

Attorney general Barr rejected the plea, The New York Timesreported on Wednesday, believing the decision would seem too lenient early on in the investigation of the incident, and deferring to the judgement of state officials who were taking over the case.

The killing sparked tense police brutality protests, where thousands of demonstrators were met with riot police and parts of the city were looted. 

Now, Mr Chauvin faces second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in a trial set to begin in early March, and local authorities are worried the prosecution could create another round of crippling unrest. 

Minnesota governor Tim Walz asked for nearly $40 million in a recent budget proposal for extra security surrounding the trial, the first to allow cameras inside the courtroom in Minnesota history due to the high public interest in the case. 

In the interim, Mr Chauvin’s case has been separated from those of the three former officers — Thomas Lane, J Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao — who helped restrain Floyd and ward off concerned bystanders, which the state is appealing to join back together.

If Mr Chauvin isn’t convicted, it’s unlikely his colleagues, two of whom were rookies in their first few days on the street, will be convicted either. 

The incident, captured in ghastly clarity by minutes of cell phone video of Floyd slowly suffocating face-down in the street, is the latest test of a US court system that rarely punishes police officers for killing Black civilians. None of the officers who killed Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown or Breonna Taylor have faced criminal consequences so far. 

Police killed Floyd on Memorial Day in 2020 after a shopkeeper called and said he’d used a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. A county medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, caused by a mix of the officers’ restraints, fentanyl and methamphetamine in Floyd’s body, and pre-existing health conditions. 

The killing inspired the largest civil rights protests across the US in generations.

Three weeks before the incident, cell phone video captured three of the same officers involved in killing Floyd roughly detaining another Black man, whom they mistakenly believed was holding a woman hostage.