Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng had been due to go on trial next week.
The judge overseeing the remaining case against two former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s killing ordered Monday that the trial be delayed until January in hopes that some additional time will improve prospects for a fair trial. Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng had been due to go on trial next week on charges of aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the May 2020 death of Floyd. But Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill ordered Monday that the trial be delayed until Jan. 5. Cahill denied a defense motion for a change of venue due to the extensive pretrial publicity surrounding the case. But he said media reports and recent events surrounding connected cases have created “a reasonable likelihood of an unfair trial” if it were to begin next week. Cahill cited the May 18 guilty plea by Thao and Keung’s co-defendant, former Officer Thomas Lane. He also cited the February convictions of Thao, Kueng and Lane on federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights. The judge said those two events and the publicity surrounding them are significant enough to make it difficult for jurors to presume that Thao and Kueng are innocent of the state charges against them. So, he ordered the delay, just shy of seven months, to diminish the effects of that publicity. Cahill also presided over last year’s trial of former Officer Derek Chauvin, which ended with a second-degree murder conviction and a 22 1/2-year sentence for the white officer who kneeled on the Black man’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes despite Floyd’s fading pleas of “I can’t breathe.” The killing led to protests worldwide and a national reckoning on racial injustice.
