Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin to 22 1/2 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd.; Credit: /Court TV via AP

Laurel Wamsley | NPR

Updated June 25, 2021 at 4:41 PM ET

A Minnesota judge sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin to 22 1/2 years in prison Friday for the murder of George Floyd.

Judge Peter Cahill wrote that part of the mission of the Minneapolis Police Department is to give citizens "voice and respect."

"Mr. Chauvin, rather than pursuing the MPD mission, treated Mr. Floyd without respect and denied him the dignity owed to all human beings and which he certainly would have extended to a friend or neighbor. In the Court's view, 270 months, which amounts to an additional ten years over the presumptive 150-month sentence, is the appropriate sentence."

Read Cahill's entire sentencing order and memoradum for Chauvin below.

Chauvin, 45, was convicted in April of all three charges he faced — second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

He was sentenced only on the first of the charges, the most serious, as is typical in Minnesota.

Cahill said Chauvin's crime included four aggravating factors: that Derek Chauvin abused a position of trust and authority as a police officer, that he treated Floyd with "particular cruelty," that he committed the crime as part of a group with at least three other people, and that children were present during the commission of the offense.

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Perhaps, years from now, if existing trends are reversed and more police officers start to be held accountable for using excessive force against Black people, we will be able to look back at this verdict as a turning point. But that would have to be a retrospective judgment based on change.