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Crime, Law and Justice
MPR News Staff

Chauvin leaves hospital, returns to prison custody after stabbing

A man listens in court.
Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin listens as guilty verdicts are read in his murder trial on April 20.
Screenshot of Court TV video

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The condition of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin is improving after he was stabbed 22 times last month while in a federal prison in Arizona.

Chauvin is serving concurrent sentences of more than 20 years for a state conviction for murdering George Floyd and federal charges of violating Floyd's civil rights.

His attorney says Chauvin was treated at a trauma facility in Tucson after the stabbing, but has since been returned to prison custody for continued medical care.

Chauvin's attorney says Chauvin's family is concerned the prison won't be able to protect him from further harm.

Court documents allege Chauvin was stabbed in the law library by fellow inmate John Turscak, who now faces attempted murder and assault charges. Turscak has been moved to a high security prison nearby.

Turscak later told FBI agents that he’d been thinking about assaulting Chauvin for about a month because he is a high-profile inmate, but denied wanting to kill him, prosecutors said.

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 Floyd’s civil rights and a 22½-year state sentence for second-degree murder.

Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pressed a knee on his neck for 9½ minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd was suspected of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.

Chauvin’s attorney during his trial, Eric Nelson, had advocated for keeping him out of general population and away from other inmates, anticipating he’d be a target. In Minnesota, Chauvin was mainly kept in solitary confinement “largely for his own protection,” Nelson wrote in court papers last year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.