Elon Musk has claimed that Derek Chauvin, the man who was convicted of murdering George Floyd, should be 'free'.
Musk's Statement on Chauvin's Sentence
On May 25, 2020, after a shopkeeper claimed that Floyd had paid for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill, Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. Three other police officers watched as George said 'I can't breathe' more than 20 times, called out for his late mother and asked that his kids be told that he loved them. In the 46-year-old's final moments, George told Derek: 'I'm about to die.' He still didn't move.
The heartbreaking footage led to a movement, which heightened awareness of the many layers of racism and violence against Black people that have been prevalent throughout history. Now, Elon Musk has waded into the matter and claimed that Chauvin's 22-year-sentence for murder is 'unjust'.
'He should be freed,' Musk wrote. 'The facts show that he was not the cause of death, nor did he at any time intend for a death to occur. Whatever else he may be, he is not a murderer. That is the truth.'
Coroner's Findings and Chauvin's Legal Efforts
Musk provided no sources for his claims that Floyd's cause of death was not from Chauvin's kneeling on his neck. The coroner found that Floyd died from a cardiopulmonary arrest caused by Chauvin restraining him and compressing his neck. He also had underlying heart disease and the presence of drugs in his system, but the coroner ruled that neither directly contributed to his death.
This week, Chauvin filed another petition to dismiss his murder conviction. In 2023, Chauvin was stabbed 22 times at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson.
Attack on Chauvin in Prison
A former member of the Mexican mafia, John Turscak, said he thought about attacking Chauvin for a month because the former officer was a high-profile inmate. He added he attacked Chauvin on Black Friday as a symbolic connection to the Black Lives Matter movement, which garnered widespread support in the wake of Mr Floyd's death, and the 'Black Hand' symbol associated with the Mexican Mafia, prosecutors said.
Chauvin's lawyer, Eric Nelson, had advocated for keeping him out of the general population and away from other inmates, anticipating he would be a target. In Minnesota, Chauvin was mainly kept in solitary confinement 'largely for his own protection', Mr Nelson wrote in court papers last year.
