Ex-Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane, convicted in connection with George Floyd’s killing, released from federal prison
By Amanda Musa, CNN
(CNN) — Thomas Lane, one of the four former Minneapolis police officers convicted in connection with the killing of George Floyd, was released from federal prison Tuesday, a Federal Bureau of Prisons spokesperson told CNN.
Lane, 41, was found guilty in 2022 of violating Floyd’s civil rights when he was fatally restrained by officers on May 25, 2020. Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was handcuffed and restrained while lying on his stomach for more than nine minutes, even as he told the officers “I can’t breathe.”
A rookie officer on his fourth day on the job, Lane held down Floyd’s legs during the arrest, while his colleague Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck and back, and another officer, J. Alexander Kueng, restrained Floyd’s torso. The fourth officer, Tou Thao, stood nearby and kept back a crowd of upset bystanders.
Lane was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison in July 2022. Later that year, Lane was sentenced to three years in prison for a separate state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death to which he pleaded guilty.
Lane had initially faced a charge of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder, which prosecutors agreed to dismiss as part of a plea agreement, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office said at the time.
State and defense attorneys jointly recommended a sentence of 36 months, CNN previously reported.
Lane’s sentences were served concurrently at the Englewood prison in Colorado, a low-security federal correctional facility outside Denver that houses roughly 1,000 inmates, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
“He has a two-year term of supervision imposed through the District of Minnesota,” Randilee Giamusso, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, told CNN in an email Tuesday.
An attorney for Lane did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
All four of the former Minneapolis police officers were convicted on state and federal charges in connection with Floyd’s death.
Chauvin was found guilty in April 2021 of state charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison. The US Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal of that conviction in November 2023.
Chauvin later pleaded guilty to federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced to 21 years in prison to run concurrently with his state sentence.
The former officer was stabbed while in an Arizona federal prison last November. Chauvin was transferred Tuesday to the Big Spring low-security federal prison in Texas, the Bureau of Prisons told CNN.
A federal jury found Kueng and Thao guilty of violating Floyd’s civil rights and they were sentenced to three years and three and a half years in prison, respectively.
In December 2022, Kueng pleaded guilty to state charges of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter, CNN previously reported. Thao was sentenced to nearly five years in prison in August 2023 for the same state charges.
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CNN’s Dave Alsup contributed to this report.
