One of the former Minneapolis police officers involved in the death of George Floyd, J. Alexander Kueng, pleaded guilty to "second-degree manslaughter."
It was he himself who admitted his responsibility on Monday, thus rejecting his right to trial by acknowledging that he was the one who restrained and knelt on Floyd's back in May 2020. CNN reports say, in exchange for this admission, the prosecution and Thomas Plunkett, his defense attorney, reached an agreement: to drop the charges of "aiding and abetting Floyd's murder."
The Floyd family's legal representatives issued a statement in which they spoke about Kueng after he pleaded guilty to the crime. In the brief, which the office of Ben Crump (one of the lawyers) published on social networks, they state that justice takes time, but in the end it works:
NEWS ALERT: @AttorneyCrump, co-counsel @TonyRomanucci & @jeff_storms today released the following statement following the guilty plea by former Minneapolis Police Officer Alexander Kueng to the 2nd-Degree Manslaughter Charge for his role in the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. pic.twitter.com/tOdw8v8Lnu
- Ben Crump Law, PLLC (@BenCrumpLaw) October 24, 2022
Kueng already knows the length of the sentence he will face after pleading guilty: three and a half years in prison. Of this sentence, he must serve at least two-thirds of these 42 months in a U.S. prison. In addition, he has not been ordered to pay any fine but, must submit to restitution to be later determined by a court. Had the trial gone forward, the former Minneapolis police officer would have faced a presumptive sentence of 12 and a half years in prison.
