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Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison has said he would not call George Floyd’s death a hate crime because there was no evidence that Derek Chauvin factored in race as he knelt on Mr Floyd’s neck for nine minutes.
In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Mr Ellison was asked if he thought Floyd’s death was a hate crime.
“I wouldn’t call it that because hate crimes are crimes where there’s an explicit motive and of bias,” he said. “We don’t have any evidence that Derek Chauvin factored in George Floyd’s race as he did what he did.”
Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis police officer, has been found guilty on three charges. His most serious conviction is second-degree murder, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 40 years in Minnesota. He will be sentenced on 16 June.
The other charges are third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
During the interview, CBS’ Scott Pelley noted that Mr Ellison could have charged Chauvin with a hate crime under Minnesota law and chose not to.
Mr Ellison responded that he could have, but “we only charge those crimes that we had evidence that we could put in front of a jury to prove.”
He said if a witness had said Chauvin made a racial reference, they could have charged him with a hate crime. “But I would have needed a witness to say that on the stand. We didn’t have it. So we didn’t do it.”
Mr Pelley said the whole world sees this as a white officer killing a black man because he is black. He asked the attorney general again if there was any evidence to support that.
Mr Ellison said that in US society, “there is a social norm that killing certain kinds of people is more tolerable than other kinds of people.”
He said that in order to stop and pay serious attention to this case and be outraged by it, it is not necessary that Chauvin had a specific racial intent to harm Floyd.
Referring to systemic racism, the attorney general said: “The fact is we know that, through housing patterns, through employment, through wealth, through a whole range of other things — so often, people of colour, black people, end up with harsh treatment from law enforcement. And other folks doing the exact same thing just don’t.”
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