Police Officers Seldomly Convicted on Murder Charges

After the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin for second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the sentencing is expected today. Research by the Police Integrity Research Group at Bowling Green State University in Ohio shows how rare murder convictions like Chauvin’s are and what sentence the public can expect.

The group found 104 non-federal law enforcement officers that were arrested on murder or manslaughter charges for between 2005 and June 24, 2019 in the United States. All cases the group looked at were shooting deaths. For the 80 where cases had concluded by the cutoff date, only 35 were convicted of a crime. These convictions included 18 manslaughter verdicts and only four murder verdicts. Other convictions were for official misconduct, reckless or negligent homicide, reckless discharge of a firearm and federal criminal deprivation of civil rights. Most of the verdicts for the latter crime – four out of five total cases - were handed down by federal juries to offenders which had their murder convictions overturned before.

For the four murder convictions where the verdicts held up, sentences ranged from 81 to 192 months in prison. On manslaughter charges, offenders received an average of 78.5 months in prison, even though some received no prison time. The longest manslaughter sentence in the study group was 480 months.

Out the 80 officers who had concluded their court cases as of 2019, 67 were white and 13 were Black – roughly in line with the U.S. population. The same holds true for convicted officers. Out of 35, 29 were white and 6 were Black. Victims were more likely to be Black – 50 out of 80 cases had a Black victim.