Elon Musk has claimed that Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd in 2020, should be freed, describing his 22-year prison sentence as unjust. In a post on his social media platform, Musk wrote: "He should be freed. The facts show that he was not the cause of death, nor did he at any time intend for a death to occur. Whatever else he may be, he is not a murderer. That is the truth."
Background of the case
On May 25, 2020, Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds after a shopkeeper claimed Floyd had paid for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. Three other police officers watched as Floyd, 46, said "I can't breathe" more than 20 times, called out for his late mother, and asked that his children be told he loved them. In his final moments, Floyd told Chauvin: "I'm about to die." Chauvin did not move. The footage sparked a global movement heightening awareness of racism and violence against Black people.
Coroner's findings and Musk's claims
Musk provided no sources for his assertion that Floyd's cause of death was not from Chauvin's kneeling on his neck. The coroner found that Floyd died from a cardiopulmonary arrest caused by Chauvin restraining him and compressing his neck. Floyd also had underlying heart disease and drugs in his system, but the coroner ruled that neither directly contributed to his death. This week, Chauvin filed another petition to dismiss his murder conviction.
Chauvin's prison stabbing
In 2023, Chauvin was stabbed 22 times at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona. A former Mexican Mafia member, John Turscak, said he thought about attacking Chauvin for a month because the former officer was a high-profile inmate. Prosecutors said Turscak attacked Chauvin on Black Friday as a symbolic connection to the Black Lives Matter movement and the "Black Hand" symbol associated with the Mexican Mafia. Chauvin's lawyer, Eric Nelson, had advocated for keeping him out of the general population, anticipating he would be a target. In Minnesota, Chauvin was mainly kept in solitary confinement "largely for his own protection," Nelson wrote in court papers last year.
