Thomas Lane, one of the four former Minneapolis police officers convicted in connection with George Floyd’s death, was released from federal prison on Tuesday, August 21.
Lane, 41, was convicted in 2022 for violating Floyd’s civil rights during the fatal arrest on May 25, 2020. Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was handcuffed and restrained on his stomach for over nine minutes, repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe.”
During the incident, Lane held down Floyd’s legs while Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck and back. Another officer, J. Alexander Kueng, held down Floyd’s torso, and the fourth officer, Tou Thao, kept watch over the crowd of concerned bystanders.
In July 2022, Lane was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison. Later that year, he received an additional three-year sentence for a separate state charge of aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death, to which he pleaded guilty.
Initially, Lane was charged with aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder, but prosecutors agreed to drop that charge as part of a plea deal, according to the Minnesota Attorney General’s office.
Lane served his sentences concurrently at Englewood prison in Colorado, a low-security federal facility near Denver that houses around 1,000 inmates, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
“He has a two-year term of supervision imposed by the District of Minnesota,” said Randilee Giamusso, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, in an email to CNN on Tuesday.
All four former Minneapolis police officers were charged at both the state and federal levels in connection with Floyd’s death.
Derek Chauvin was convicted in April 2021 on state charges, including second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter, and was sentenced to 22.5 years. The U.S. Supreme Court denied his appeal of that conviction in November 2023.
Chauvin also pleaded guilty to federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced to 21 years in prison, which he is serving concurrently with his state sentence.