Below are some of the reactions at Mule Creek State Prison in California after former police officer Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years for the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“I want him to get every bit of it cuz that’s what they do to us… their kind of justice.”
— Steven Serna, 41, White male, incarcerated 10 years
“Justice in its purest form should function as an agent of change. The real justice is that (there) is a paradigm shift in awareness that is manifesting as a result of this incident.”
— Christopher Bryson, 38, Black male, incarcerated 14 years
“He should get 25-to-life. That’s what they gave me. Treat everybody the same.”
— Aaron Jones, 56, Black male, incarcerated 27 years
“If he did something wrong, he did something wrong.”
— Anonymous correctional officer
“I believe in the courts. He needs to be held accountable.”
— Andy Scholl, White male, staff recreation coach
“I’m all for abolition. There’s no justice under our current system. He should get life.”
— Phil Derosier, 41, White male, incarcerated 11 years
“I hope this puts law enforcement on notice that our expectations of them are that they preserve the peace and protect the public.”
— Jesse Carson, White male, incarcerated 20 years
“He shoulda got more. Law enforcement always gets less than half the time than regular citizens do. If that woulda been us, we woulda got ‘Buck Rogers’ time. It’s sad.”
— Brandon Thomas, incarcerated for 10 years
“Appropriate for someone in his situation. The Minnesota sentencing structure is based on the worst charge. In California, he would’ve gotten more. He got lucky.”
— Steve Waters, White male, incarcerated 9 years
“I expected it would be 20 to 25 years. As to whether that’s enough, I’m not sure. I didn’t follow the trial.”
— Mark, 70, White male, incarcerated 10 years
“I think it’s ridiculous. It was too short for the crime. He and his buddies should be taken out back and shot in the head!”
— Shawna, 55, White transgender, incarcerated 18 years
“I think it is too much. I understand it’s a life lost. Ten years would have been enough.”
— Anonymous Hispanic male, 49, incarcerated 24 years
“In my opinion, it’s what the people want. If he would’ve gotten off, there would have been a riot.”
— Chabo, Hispanic male, 50, incarcerated 8 years
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Here are our ground rules:
- You must credit Prison Journalism Project. In the byline, we prefer “[Author Name], Prison Journalism Project.” At the top of the text of your story, please include a line that says: “This story was originally published by Prison Journalism Project” and include a link to the article.
- No republishing of photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No editing the content, including the headline, except to reflect changes in time, location and editorial style. For example, changing, “today” to “last week,” or San Quentin to San Quentin, California. You can also make minor revisions for style or headline size, and you can trim stories for space. You must also retain all original hyperlinks, including links to the Prison Journalism Project newsletters.
- No translation of our stories into another language without specific permission. Please contact inquiries@prisonjournalismproject.org.
- No selling ads against our stories, but you can publish it on a page with ads that you’ve already sold.
- No reselling or syndicating our stories, including on platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. You also can’t republish our work automatically or all at once. Please select them individually.
- No scraping our website or using our stories to populate websites designed to improve search rankings or gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
- Any site our stories appear on must have a prominent and effective way to contact you.
- If we send you a request to remove our story, you must do so immediately.
- If you share republished stories on social media, please tag Prison Journalism Project. We have official accounts on Twitter (@prisonjourn), Facebook (@prisonjournalism), Instagram (@prisonjournalism) and Linked In.
- Let us know when you share the story. Send us a note, so we can keep track.