Derek Chauvin's family has received no updates after prison stabbing, attorney says

FILE - In this image taken from video, former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin addresses the court at the Hennepin County Courthouse, June 25, 2021, in Minneapolis. Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, was stabbed by another inmate and seriously injured Friday, Nov. 24, 2023, at a federal prison in Arizona, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. (Court TV via AP, Pool, File) (Uncredited)

MINNEAPOLIS ā€“ An attorney for Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, said Saturday that Chauvin's family has been kept in the dark by federal prison officials after he was stabbed in prison.

The lawyer, Gregory M. Erickson, slammed the lack of transparency by the Federal Bureau of Prisons a day after his client was stabbed on Friday by another inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona, a prison that has been plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages.

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A person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday that Chauvin was seriously injured in the stabbing. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the attack. On Saturday, Brian Evans, a spokesperson for the Minnesota attorney generalā€™s office, said: ā€œWe have heard that he is expected to survive.ā€

Erickson said Chauvin's family and his attorneys have hit a wall trying to obtain information about the attack from Bureau of Prisons officials. He said Chauvin's family has been forced to assume he is in stable condition, based only on news accounts, and has been contacting the prison repeatedly seeking updates but have been provided with no information.

ā€œAs an outsider, I view this lack of communication with his attorneys and family members as completely outrageous,ā€ Erickson said in a statement to the AP. ā€œIt appears to be indicative of a poorly run facility and indicates how Derekā€™s assault was allowed to happen.ā€

Erickson's comments highlight concerns raised for years that federal prison officials provide little to no information to the loved ones of incarcerated people who are seriously injured or ill in federal custody. The AP has previously reported the Bureau of Prisons ignored its internal guidelines and failed to notify the families of inmates who were seriously ill with COVID-19 as the virus raged through federal prisons across the U.S.

The issue around family notification has also prompted federal legislation introduced last year in the U.S. Senate that would require the Justice Department to establish guidelines for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and state correctional systems to notify the families of incarcerated people if their loved one has a serious illness, a life-threatening injury or if they die behind bars.

ā€œHow the family members who are in charge of Derekā€™s decisions regarding his personal medical care and his emergency contact were not informed after his stabbing further indicates the institutionā€™s poor procedures and lack of institutional control,ā€ Erickson said of the prison.

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday evening.

The Bureau of Prisons has only confirmed an assault at the Arizona facility and said employees performed ā€œlife-saving measuresā€ before the inmate was taken to a hospital for further treatment and evaluation. The Bureau of Prisons did not name the victim or provide a medical status ā€œfor privacy and safety reasons.ā€

Prosecutors who successfully pursued a second-degree murder conviction against Chauvin at a jury trial in 2021 expressed dismay that he became the target of violence while in federal custody.

Terrence Floyd, George Floydā€™s brother, told the AP on Saturday that he wouldnā€™t wish for anyone to be stabbed in prison and that he felt numb when he initially learned of the news.

ā€œIā€™m not going to give my energy towards anything that happens within those four walls ā€” because my energy went towards getting him in those four walls,ā€ Terrence Floyd said. ā€œWhatever happens in those four walls, I donā€™t really have any feelings about it.ā€

Chauvinā€™s stabbing is the second high-profile attack on a federal prisoner in the last five months. In July, disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar was stabbed by a fellow inmate at a federal penitentiary in Florida.

Chauvin, 47, was sent to FCI Tucson from a maximum-security Minnesota state prison in August 2022 to simultaneously serve a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floydā€™s civil rights and a 22Ā½-year state sentence for second-degree murder.

Another of Chauvin's lawyers, Eric Nelson, had advocated for keeping him out of the general population and away from other inmates, anticipating heā€™d be a target. In Minnesota, Chauvin was mainly kept in solitary confinement ā€œlargely for his own protection,ā€ Nelson wrote in court papers last year.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvinā€™s appeal of his murder conviction. Separately, Chauvin is making a longshot bid to overturn his federal guilty plea, claiming new evidence shows he didnā€™t cause Floydā€™s death.

Floyd, who was Black, was killed May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pressed a knee on his neck for 9Ā½ minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd was suspected of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.

Bystander video captured Floydā€™s fading cries of ā€œI canā€™t breathe.ā€ His death touched off protests worldwide, some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism.

Three other former officers who were at the scene received lesser state and federal sentences for their roles in Floydā€™s death.

Chauvinā€™s stabbing comes as the federal Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny in recent years following wealthy financier Jeffrey Epsteinā€™s jail suicide in 2019. It's another example of the agencyā€™s inability to keep even its highest profile prisoners safe after Nassarā€™s stabbing and ā€œUnabomberā€ Ted Kaczynskiā€™s suicide at a federal medical center in June.

At the federal prison in Tucson in November 2022, an inmate at the facilityā€™s low-security prison camp pulled out a gun and attempted to shoot a visitor in the head. The weapon, which the inmate shouldnā€™t have had, misfired and no one was hurt.

An ongoing AP investigation has uncovered deep, previously unreported flaws within the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Departmentā€™s largest law enforcement agency with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates and an annual budget of about $8 billion.

AP reporting has revealed rampant sexual abuse and other criminal conduct by staff, dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages that have hampered responses to emergencies, including inmate assaults and suicides.

Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters was brought in last year to reform the crisis-plagued agency. She vowed to change archaic hiring practices and bring new transparency, while emphasizing that the agency's mission is ā€œto make good neighbors, not good inmates."

___

Sisak reported from New York City. Associated Press writers Amy Forliti in Minneapolis and Michael Balsamo in New York contributed to this report.


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