ST PAUL, Minn. — An appellate panel upheld the federal conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao Friday, ruling that prosecutors presented "sufficient evidence" to support the decision.
Thao and fellow former MPD officer J. Alexander Kueng were convicted on two counts of violating George Floyd's civil rights when he was murdered in Minneapolis in 2020.
The jury found Thao and Kueng deprived the 46-year-old Black man of medical care and failed to stop former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin as he knelt on Floyd's neck for 9 1/2 minutes while Floyd gasped for air. Kueng received 36 months for not rendering medical aid and not stopping Chauvin, while Thao received a 42-month sentence because the court ruled he was more experienced and should have known to intervene.
Thao argued that there wasn't enough evidence to say he acted with the specific intent to deprive Floyd of his constitutional rights and that he was deliberately indifferent to Floyd's medical needs. He also claimed that prosecutorial misconduct deprived him of a fair trial.
In response, the appellate panel wrote that the prosecution presented enough evidence to prove that Thao knew from his training that Chauvin's use of force on Floyd was unreasonable, adding that "he had a duty to intervene in another officer's use of unreasonable force."
While the panel did say that the evidence wasn't overwhelming, they said that given his training, a jury could find that he acted willfully by not giving Floyd medical aid.
In regard to prosecutorial misconduct interfering with the trial, the panel wrote that there wasn't enough to deprive Thao of his right to a fair trial.
Thao is currently serving his three-and-a-half-year federal sentence and will be sentenced Monday in state court following his conviction of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter back in May.
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