Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton each responded to Tuesday’s verdict in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin.
The former president said the jury had “made the right decision” by convicting Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, of murdering George Floyd’s death in the city last May.
“His tragic death and the evidence at trial made it painfully clear that we need to do much better at recruiting, training and holding law enforcement accountable to the communities they serve,” Clinton wrote in a statement on Twitter. “Failure to do this continues to plague America, as we have seen in recent days.”
Clinton added that all too often the “color of a person’s skin” is a determining factor in how they are treated in “almost every aspect of American life.”
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“While the verdict won’t bring back George Floyd, it can help us prevent more pointless deaths and speed the day when we are all treated equally in matters of life, freedom, dignity, respect and opportunity,” he wrote.
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He said this could be Floyd’s “lasting legacy”.
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential candidate, said Floyd’s family and community were finally “held accountable” for his murder in her own statement on Twitter.
“Always and forever, black lives matter,” she wrote.
The Minneapolis jury found 45-year-old Chauvin guilty on all three charges of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.
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Floyd died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest.