
Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who was sentenced to 22 ½ years after he was convicted for the murder of George Floyd, pleaded not guilty to violating a teenager’s civil rights in a separate case from 2017 that involved similar use of force.
The 2017 indictment against Chauvin happened because a 14 year old boy claims that Chauvin hit him in the head with a flashlight and held his knee on the boy’s neck and upper back while he was handcuffed and not resisting.
The Minneapolis police officer appeared in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Hildy Bowbeer via video link from a state maximum security prison during a virtual hearing in which he pleaded not guilty to violating a teenager’s civil right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure by using a neck restraint.
Chauvin wrote in his 2017 report that the teen resisted arrest and that he “used body weight to pin” him to the floor. He also wrote that the boy was bleeding from the ear, and needed two stitches. He described the boy as 6-foot-2 and about 240 pounds.
Prosecutors showed Chauvin had used neck or head and upper body restraints seven times prior to Floyd’s death, four of those times the state prosecutors said he went too far and held the restraints “beyond the point when such force was needed under the circumstances.”
Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J. Kueng, and Tou Thao were arraigned on civil rights violations in Floyd’s death on Tuesday where they pled not guilty.
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