FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
WASHINGTON – It is not known who guaranteed the one million dollar bail. But former cop Derek Chauvin is free again. Last May 25, in Minneapolis, the African American George Floyd, 46, stopped for a check-up with three other colleagues.. He made him lie down on the asphalt and with his knee mounted on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, remaining motionless even as the man below him complained more and more faintly: I can’t breathe. Floyd suffocated. Protests spread to Minneapolis, then across the country and around the world, triggering a mobilization with few precedents.
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Now the movement, slowed down in recent days by inertia and also by Covid, could rekindle from Minneapolis, where, in those days of late May, there were also destruction, fires and clashes with the police. Chauvin, 44, was immediately expelled from the Police Department and soon thereafter the prosecutor charged him with manslaughter. Then he corrected the charge with the most serious intentional homicide. The other three patrol officers were also charged with complicity in murder: Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao, who had already been released on bail of $ 750,000.
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But where does all this money come from? The Minneapolis Police Department said it did not collect the money. A fundraiser in favor of Chauvin’s release was promoted on the web. But reportedly only $ 4,500 was recovered. Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, merely confirmed to the agency Ap that his client was released yesterday morning from the maximum security prison, Oak Park Heights, in Minnesota. But he didn’t add anything else.
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In recent months, Chauvin’s family has sold their home in Minneapolis, but the proceeds are unlikely to be enough for the bail. From the court papers released by the County of Hennepin it appears that a bond has been presented, a kind of surety that guarantees for the accused. a detail that is already arousing controversy among activists: who wants to help Floyd’s alleged killers?
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Chauvin is due to appear before the court in March 2021. His lawyer will argue that Floyd’s death actually occurred from an overdose of Fentanyl, an opioid generally used for pain therapy., but now widely used as a narcotic substance. The autopsy report, published May 29 by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, will be reviewed. Here’s the key passage: The combined effect of Mr. Floyd’s immobilization by the police and his previous health condition and any potential intoxication in his system likely contributed to his death. But the defensive line bitterly contested by the Floyd family, by the dozens of associations that are assisting it and, above all, by the video that scandalized America. George made no resistance that May afternoon. Impossible to forget that policeman’s grin, a hand in his pocket and his knee pressed to the neck of a defenseless man.
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October 7, 2020 (change October 7, 2020 | 11:30 pm)
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