Derek Chauvin’s stabbing highlights security issues in federal prisons, experts say – By N’dea Yancey-Bragg (USA Today) / Dec 10, 2023
When former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was sent to federal prison after pleading guilty to violating George Floyd’s civil rights, manyexpertsconsidered it to be a safer option for him than state prison, which is where he was previously sent after being convicted of Floyd’s murder.
However, Chauvin’s lawyer at the time, Eric Nelson, anticipated he could become a target and pushed for him to be kept out of general population. More than a year later, Nelson’s concerns were validated: Chauvin was stabbed 22 times Nov. 24 by a fellow inmate who told investigators he attacked the former officer because of his notoriety, according to court documents.
The attack comes after former sports doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexually abusing athletes, was stabbed in July at a federal penitentiary in Florida; the beating death of James “Whitey” Bulger at a West Virginia federal prison in 2018; as well as the suicides of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski a federal prison medical center in North Carolina in June and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein at a federal jail in New York in 2019. The latest violent incident has renewed concerns about the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ ability to keep incarcerated people, particularly the most notorious, safe.
