At a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, on Friday, another prisoner stabbed Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer found guilty of killing George Floyd, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke with CBS News.
“I am sad to hear that Derek Chauvin was the target of violence,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement to CBS News. “He was duly convicted of his crimes, and, like any incarcerated individual, he should be able to serve his sentence without fear of retaliation or violence.”
Later on Saturday morning, Ellison released a statement confirming that, as of the previous evening, Chauvin is “expected to survive.”
In a statement, the Bureau of Prisons reported that at approximately 12:30 p.m., an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson had been “assaulted.” Friday local time. The attack on Chauvin was first reported by The Associated Press. The agency did not identify the assaulted prisoner or provide information about their condition in the statement, but it did state that responding staff contained the situation and carried out “life-saving measures” before the prisoner was transferred to a nearby hospital “for further treatment and evaluation.”
The medium-security prison is known as the Federal Correctional Institution. The FBI was informed, and no staff members were hurt, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
Gregory Erickson, Chauvin’s civil attorney, told CBS News in a statement that “none of our law firm, nor any of Derek’s immediate family (including the holder of his medical power of attorney-and his emergency contact-two separate family members) who have attempted to contact the prison have been provided with any updates on his condition or his current location.”
August 2022 saw Chauvin, 47, transferred from a maximum-security Minnesota state prison to FCI Tucson to serve a 22½-year state sentence for second-degree murder and a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights. In the previous five months, there have been two high-profile stabbings of federal inmates, including Chauvin’s.
The Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson received Chauvin on Wednesday from a maximum-security prison in a Minneapolis suburb where he frequently spent the majority of his day in a 10-by-10-foot cell, according to the Bureau of Prisons. As part of a larger complex that also includes a minimum-security satellite camp and a high-security penitentiary, the Tucson facility houses 266 male and female inmates.
The conditions of Chauvin’s detention were not disclosed by the Bureau of Prisons, citing privacy, safety, and security concerns, according to spokeswoman Randilee Giamussoau.
Prior to this, experts predicted that Chauvin would probably be safer in the federal system. It usually houses less violent offenders, and as a Minneapolis police officer, he would be less likely to mix with people he had arrested or looked into.
Disgraced sports physician Larry Nassar was stabbed in July at a federal penitentiary in Florida by a fellow prisoner.
In a little more than a year, this is also the second significant incident at the federal prison in Tucson. An inmate at the low-security prison camp at the facility pulled out a gun in November 2022 and tried to shoot a guest in the head. The prisoner shouldn’t have had the weapon, but it malfunctioned, and no one was harmed.
Eric Nelson, Chauvin’s attorney, argued that since he was likely to be targeted, it was best to keep him isolated from the general public and other prisoners.
The majority of Chauvin’s time in Minnesota was spent in solitary confinement, “largely for his own protection,” according to court documents Nelson wrote in 2017.
Chauvin’s appeal was denied by the Supreme Court last week, upholding his conviction. In October, Chauvin’s attorneys requested that the Supreme Court take up his case, which was based on a Minnesota trial court’s denial of his requests to sequester the jury and change the venue. Because of the pretrial publicity and the potential for violence and riots in the event of his acquittal, Chauvin contended that the decision to hold the proceedings in Minneapolis deprived him of his right to a fair trial.
On May 25, 2020, Floyd, a 46-year-old black man who was charged with attempting to make a convenience store purchase with a fake bill, passed away. Chauvin, a white man, is accused of pinning Floyd to the ground for nine and a half minutes while placing his knee on Floyd’s neck. Due to their involvement in Floyd’s demise, three other former officers who were present at the scene were given lighter state and federal sentences.
Witnesses’ footage of Floyd’s death ignited a global outcry against institutional racism and police brutality.
Following affluent financier Jeffrey Epstein’s jail suicide in 2019, the federal Bureau of Prisons has come under increased scrutiny in the wake of Chauvin’s stabbing. This further demonstrates the agency’s incapacity to protect even its most well-known inmates following the stabbing of Nassar and the suicide of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski in June at a federal medical facility located in eastern North Carolina.
