The indictment was a rare instance of police officers facing accusations of federal civil rights violations.
Four former Minneapolis police officers were indicted on federal charges unsealed on Friday of violating the civil rights of George Floyd, the Black man whose killing last year set off months of nationwide demonstrations against police violence. The indictment came weeks after one of the officers, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of second-degree murder in a state prosecution in Mr. Floyd’s death. The federal charges amount to another extraordinary censure of law enforcement officials, who have rarely faced criminal charges for using deadly force, particularly accusations of civil rights violations. They are also a rare instance of the Justice Department seeking charges after a local conviction but before the rest of the case had played out; the other three officers await a state trial in August. The department’s pursuit of a grand jury indictment even after Mr. Chauvin’s conviction also shows that officials believed that, regardless of how the other cases are resolved, the officers still needed to be held accountable for violating the Constitution, former federal prosecutors said. The new charges also went beyond Mr. Chauvin’s conviction in Mr. Floyd’s death. A second federal indictment on Friday accused Mr. Chauvin of depriving a teenager of his civil rights during a 2017 encounter. Mr. Chauvin held the teenager by the throat, struck his head repeatedly with a flashlight and pressed his knee into his neck and back while the juvenile lay handcuffed, court papers said. The Biden administration has repeatedly shown it intends to aggressively crack down on police misconduct, including announcing a broad investigation into the Minneapolis police department last month after Mr. Chauvin’s conviction. “It’s encouraging that the Justice Department is using the civil rights statute in this case,” said Jonathan Smith, a former official in the department’s civil rights division. But, he added, it was too early to tell whether the indictment signaled a willingness by the department to seek more such charges, noting that Mr. Chauvin’s murder conviction was also considered an exception to the norm in police killings. Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general who oversaw the prosecution of Mr. Chauvin on the state charges, said that it would be “entirely appropriate” for the Justice Department to seek a federal civil rights conviction against him, “particularly now that Derek Chauvin has been convicted of murder under Minnesota law for the death of George Floyd.” The indictment charges Mr. Chauvin,45, and other former Minneapolis Police Department officers Tou Thao,35, J. Alexander Kueng,27, and Thomas Lane,38, with willfully depriving Mr. Floyd of his constitutional civil rights during his arrest. It alleged that Mr. Chauvin used unconstitutional, unreasonable force when he held his knees across Mr. Floyd’s neck, back and arm as he lay handcuffed and unresisting on the ground, and that Mr. Thao and Mr. Kueng willfully failed to stop Mr. Chauvin from using unreasonable force. All four men were accused of willfully failing to aid Mr.
