A lawyer for Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, said on Saturday that Chauvin’s family has been kept in the dark by federal prison officials after he was stabbed in prison.
The lawyer, Gregory M Erickson, slammed the lack of transparency by the Federal Bureau of Prisons a day after his client was stabbed by another inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona, a prison that has been plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages.
A person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Friday that Chauvin was seriously injured in the stabbing.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss the attack.
On Saturday, Brian Evans, a spokesperson for the Minnesota attorney general’s office, said: “We have heard that he is expected to survive.”
Mr Erickson said Chauvin’s family and his attorneys have hit a wall trying to obtain information about the attack from Bureau of Prisons officials.
He said Chauvin’s family has been forced to assume he is in stable condition, based only on news accounts, and has been contacting the prison repeatedly seeking updates but have been provided with no information.
“As an outsider, I view this lack of communication with his attorneys and family members as completely outrageous,” Erickson said in a statement to the AP. “It appears to be indicative of a poorly run facility and indicates how Derek’s assault was allowed to happen.”
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 22-and-a-half-year state sentence for second-degree murder.
