Former Minneapolis police officer J. Alexander Kueng is scheduled to be sentenced this morning for his role in George Floyd’s murder in May 2020. 

Under the terms of his October plea deal, Kueng pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter with a proposed sentence of three and a half years. Kueng will serve that at the same time as his federal prison sentence of three years for violating Floyd’s constitutional rights. In exchange for the plea deal, prosecutors agreed to drop a more serious charge against Kueng for aiding and abetting second-degree murder.   

Kueng was one of the first officers responding to a 911 call that reported that Floyd had tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill at a store at the intersection of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in south Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. 

Kueng and his partner Thomas Lane handcuffed Floyd then tried to force him into the back of a police SUV. Kueng kneeled on Floyd’s back as his former colleague Derek Chauvin put his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, which killed him. 

In his plea deal, Kueng admitted that he should have known that “positional asphyxia” was a danger for Floyd, and that the force used on Floyd was unreasonable. 

Kueng was a rookie cop at the time Floyd was killed, and testified in his federal trial that he deferred to Chauvin, who had been his field training officer. 

Kueng’s former co-defendant Tou Thao, who held bystanders at bay as Floyd was killed, asked in October for a bench trial on the charge of second-degree manslaughter. That case could be decided early next year. 

Former officer Thomas Lane pleaded guilty in May to state charges and was later sentenced to three years in state prison. Former officer Chauvin was convicted of murder in state court last year and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison. 

All four men have also been convicted or pleaded guilty on federal charges of violating Floyd’s constitutional rights and are serving their sentences in federal prison. 

Kueng is currently being held at the low-security Federal Bureau of Prisons Elkton facility in Lisbon, Ohio, according to Judge Peter Cahill’s order on the sentencing. The sentencing will take place remotely.  

Collected from Minnesota Public Radio News. View original source here.