Former police officer Derek Chauvin has been moved from a Minnesota state prison where he was often held in solitary confinement to a medium-security federal prison in Arizona.
Chauvin, who was convicted in George Floyd’s killing, was taken Wednesday from a maximum-security prison in a Minneapolis suburb, where he often spent most of his day in a 10-by-10-foot cell, to the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
The Tucson facility houses 266 inmates, both male and female, as part of a larger complex that includes a high-security penitentiary and a minimum-security satellite camp.
Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Randilee Giamusso declined to detail the circumstances of Chauvin’s confinement, citing privacy, safety and security concerns.
Chauvin was sentenced last month in U.S. District Court in St. Paul to 21 years on federal civil rights charges after pleading guilty in an agreement with prosecutors. He was already serving 22.5 years for his conviction in state court on murder and manslaughter charges; a condition of the agreement called for the sentences to be served concurrently and in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson suggested when sentencing Chauvin that he be placed near family who live between Iowa and Minnesota. But federal officials are not bound by judicial requests.
Last month Magnuson also sentenced ex-Minneapolis police Officer J. Alexander Kueng to three years in prison and former Officer Tou Thao to 3.5 years on criminal civil rights charges related to the Floyd killing. They intend to appeal their sentences. Earlier in July, former officer Thomas Lane was sentenced to 2.5 years. He’s been ordered to report to a low-security federal prison camp in Colorado later this month.
