Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has been hospitalized after suffering serious injuries during a prison attack on Friday (Nov. 24). The 47-year-old, who was convicted of murdering George Floyd in 2020, was reportedly stabbed by another inmate at a medium-security facility in Arizona.
The Bureau of Prisons confirmed to The Associated Press that “responding employees initiated life-saving measures for one incarcerated individual” at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson. “No employees were injured during the incident,” continued their statement. Visitation to the facility, which houses 380 inmates, has been suspended.
On Saturday (Nov. 25), Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said that he was “sad to hear that Derek Chauvin was the target of violence. He was duly convicted of his crimes, and, like any incarcerated individual, he should be able to serve his sentence without fear of retaliation or violence.”
Ellison, who led the prosecution in the trial against Chauvin in 2021, released a book in May titled, “Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence.” The book revisits the murder case of Floyd and the country’s reckoning with police violence and accountability.
The disgraced cop is concurrently serving two sentences of over 20 years each for the death of Floyd and for the violation of a 14-year-old boy’s civil rights. He was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in a highly publicized trial in April 2021. As widely reported by REVOLT, Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck and back for nine minutes as the 46-year-old pleaded that he was unable to breathe.
In February 2022, Chauvin pleaded guilty to civil rights violations in a separate case where he was accused of kneeling on a 14-year-old’s in a similar fashion during an arrest in 2017.
On Monday (Nov. 20), the U.S. Supreme Court denied Chauvin’s appeal to overturn the guilty verdict in the Floyd case. His lawyers argued that he did not receive a fair trial due to the publicity surrounding the case. Additional officers charged in relation to the fatal arrest include J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao, who were each convicted of depriving Floyd of his civil rights. Kueng and Thao were also convicted of failing to intervene as Chauvin kneeled on the man’s neck.