That conviction was a travesty
Chauvin was the commanding officer at the scene, and hence all responsibilities lie with Chauvin.
Thao did not lay one finger on George Floyd and had the least culpability in Floyd's death.
[Officer Thao was partnered with Officer Derek Chauvin the evening of May 25, 2020. As I recall, the evidence showed Thao and Chauvin were about to take their lunch break at the Minneapolis Police 3rd Precinct when they overheard rookie officers Kueng and Lane airing that they were making an arrest at 38th and Chicago. Thao and Chauvin delayed their lunch and headed that way to assist, given the corner was known for trouble. It was a fateful decision.
When they arrived on scene, Kueng and Lane were attempting to get Floyd, who was handcuffed, into the rear of a squad car. Floyd was resisting and pushing back against officers, while a citizen who knew Floyd was on the sidewalk urging Floyd to cooperate with the officers and get in the squad.
Chauvin assisted Kueng and Lane getting Floyd to lie on the ground outside the squad car while they called for an ambulance, due to Floyd's odd behavior including froth on his lips. Chauvin maintained a control position with his knee on Floyd's shoulder and neck for the next 9 minutes, while
Thao spent most of his time and attention with a growing number of people who had gathering on the sidewalk yelling at Chauvin.I won't relitigate the details of Floyd's death while on the ground outside the squad they are a matter of record in thousands of pages of court documents. Perhaps the most complete and concise compilation of the facts can be found in the verdict and findings of fact in the Tou Thao case found
here.
An inordinate price paid;
What
is worth noting is that Thao paid an inordinate price for his involvement in the case. You can watch his actions from his body camera
here. Take the time to watch it then objectively answer this question: Did his actions really justify being sentenced to 57 months in state prison concurrent with 42 months in federal prison?
To help with the answer, it's important to compare Thao's charges, bail, and eventual sentences to other cases.
Thao was originally charged with two counts of Aiding and Abetting Second Degree Murder, and Aiding and Abetting Second Degree Manslaughter. He was an on-duty police officer at the time of the alleged offenses. He did not represent a threat to the public or a threat to flee, yet he received a $1 million dollar bail. I recently
wrote about a Minneapolis gang member who has now been charged with his involvement in three murders before his 20th birthday. He is currently held in the Hennepin County jail on six counts of murder and two counts of using a dangerous weapon in a drive-by shooting. His bail? You guessed it: $1 million.
Thao was charged in both federal and state court (as were each of the officers)
a rare application of the dual sovereignty doctrine. I can tell you that in my 33 years in Hennepin County law enforcement, including many years bringing gang, firearm, and drug cases to federal court, I'm not aware of a single case where state charges were maintained after federal charges were issued. They were routinely dismissed "in the interest of justice." The system didn't show that same "interest" when it came to Thao or his fellow officers.
At sentencing in his state case, Thao read a statement to the judge in which he said he could not plead guilty to something he did not do. That obviously angered the judge, who said he had expected to see more remorse from Thao. As a result, despite the average "aggravated durational departure" rate in Minnesota courts being just 3%, Thao's prison sentence was "aggravated" or increased above the presumptive sentence of 48 months.
In fact, the judge sentenced Thao to 6 months more than the prosecutor, Keith Ellison's Attorney General's Office, had requested.
To put Thao's 57-month state sentence in better perspective, it's worth looking at a sentence I recently wrote about involving defendant
Husayn Braveheart. During a violent crime spree as a juvenile, Braveheart had murdered a man during a carjacking, and committed two other armed carjackings, felony possession of a handgun by a minor, an assault, two occupied home burglaries, theft of a motor vehicle, and fleeing police in a motor vehicle. For those horrific and violent crimes, Braveheart plead guilty to a single count of attempted first degree assault. He received a 54-month prison sentence, which amounted to "time already served," so he never actually went to prison. Braveheart served just eight additional months in the county workhouse before being released to the street.
Justice is supposed to be blind equal justice for equal crimes.
Lady Justice peered out from under her blindfold, and justice failed Tou Thao. ]
https://www.americanexperiment.org/tou-thaos-prison-release-marks-the-end-of-a-nightmare/ 
