Five years ago, on May 25, 2020, a white Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, during an arrest.
A bystander’s video showed officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes as Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. The footage sparked weeks of global protests against police brutality and racism. It contributed to a jury’s murder conviction against Chauvin and a federal investigation into the police department.
Although ample evidence showed that Chauvin and police misconduct were to blame for Floyd’s death, another narrative quickly emerged — that Floyd died because of a drug overdose, not because of Chauvin’s actions.
Five years later, that falsehood is central to calls for President Donald Trump to pardon Chauvin.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., for example, recently revived her longstanding, and long-debunked, take that Chauvin did not cause Floyd’s death.
"I strongly support Derek Chauvin being pardoned and released from prison," Greene wrote in a May 14 X post. "George Floyd died of a drug overdose."
In 2021, a Minnesota jury convicted Chauvin of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Chauvin also pleaded guilty to twice violating a federal criminal civil rights statute — once against Floyd and once against a 14-year-old in 2017. The state and federal sentences, which Chauvin is serving concurrently, each exceeded 20 years.
In 2023, following a two-year...
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