Thomas Lane’s lawyer blames George Floyd for staying in car

The lawyer for rookie cop Thomas Lane has blamed George Floyd for not getting out of the car during his arrest as the officer’s family has set up a fundraiser to pay his legal fees.

In a tense stand-off with Chris Cuomo on Cuomo Prime Time Monday night, Lane’s attorney Earl Gray said Floyd shouldn’t have resisted arrest and should have followed the orders of the four cops, as he insisted bodycam footage proves his client’s innocence.  

‘It wasn’t a violent resistance but it wasn’t a kind of non-resistance that an individual should do when police officers are arresting him,’ Gray said.

‘He should get out of his vehicle and follow the orders of the police officers. He didn’t do that.’

Gray also said Lane could not see what Officer Derek Chauvin was doing to Floyd’s neck from where he was pinning the black man to the floor – despite footage appearing to show the rookie cop looking in the direction of these events.

He then leveled some blame on the bystanders who had filmed Floyd’s alleged murder and warned the cops they were killing the black man, saying they should have stepped in if they thought Floyd was dying. 

Lane, 37, was arrested and charged Wednesday with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter, following Floyd’s slaying when fellow officer Chauvin knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. 

Lane, who was four days into the job as a police officer when he helped pin Floyd down onto the ground, is facing faces 40 years in jail if convicted. 

The rookie cop’s family have now issued an appeal to the public to help pay for the cop’s legal fees after his bail was set at $1 million – while protesters across America continue to demand justice for Floyd and call for an end to systemic racism and police brutality against African-Americans.  

Gray hit out at the deceased man Monday blaming Floyd for the horrific events that unfolded during his arrest for allegedly paying with a fake $20 bill.

The lawyer brushed off the charges against his client, saying Floyd should have done what the cops told him and referencing that he was allegedly under the influence of drugs at the time.   

‘If you saw the body camera you would know that when my client – after he went up to see Mr Floyd to talk to him – Mr Floyd did not show his hands,’ he said. 

‘He put his right hand below the seat which is clear evidence… that he might be going to grab a gun or hide drugs so my client told him “let me see both of your hands” and he pulled out his gun.

‘There was a pause and he didn’t show his hands right away but then he put both of his hands on the steering wheel.’ 

Gray said Lane then put his gun back in his holster and they took Floyd out of his car to arrest him.

‘And he resisted leaving his vehicle – they finally got him out of his vehicle,’ Gray continued, although admitting that Floyd was not violent in his resistance.

‘They went to put this hands behind his back to handcuff him and then he resisted again – he didn’t want that,’ said Gray.

Gray said the bodycam footage then shows Floyd sitting on the ground for some time before the cops go to move him to the squad car. 

‘They take him over to the squad car and he’s walking slowly and right before they put him in the squad car he lays back and falls down and he says “I get claustrophobic, I don’t want to go in that squad car”,’ Lane’s attorney said. 

He then said the officers managed to get Floyd in the car but when Chauvin went round to the other side of the car ‘Floyd shoved with his feet out toward where officer Chauvin was and he ended up on the other side of the squad car’. 

‘I would call it a struggle,’ Gray added.

Gray defended the use of force that led to Floyd’s death saying he ‘was fighting’ and he was ‘6 foot 2 and had the build of a bodybuilder’.

He also added that it was also ‘clearly evident’ Floyd was ‘under the influence of some kind of drug’ – something that Cuomo pointed out is not visible or evident in any of the footage that has so far been made public.  

The lawyer then went on to insist that Lane could not see what Chauvin – the cop who knelt on his neck – was doing to Floyd.

Lane was holding Floyd down by his feet at the time and footage from onlookers appears to show Lane kneeling upright and looking in the direction of Chauvin and Floyd’s upper body.

‘He’s got his feet – he was holding his feet down,’ he said. 

‘Officer King was next, then Chauvin – you say [Lane] had a clear view he didn’t.’ 

He then slammed the members of the public who witnessed the events, even suggesting they should have intervened rather than his client. 

‘The public was watching this,’ he said. ‘My client doesn’t have a real good view of Mr Floyd, of what Chauvin is doing, but if all these people say “why didn’t my client intercede” – well if the public was there and in uproar about this they didn’t intercede either.’

Gray said he believes the release of Lane’s bodycam footage would shed new light on the events leading to Floyd’s death.

While he insisted his client could not clearly see the pressure Chauvin was placing on Floyd’s neck, he also said his client asked Chauvin if they should roll Floyd onto his side on more than one occasion. 

‘He did everything that he thought he was supposed to do,’ Gray told Cuomo.

‘He’s a man of compassion. He’s not a violent person.’

When pushed by Cuomo on why Lane did not follow his duty to intervene when he saw Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, Gray said Lane was just doing what his superior told him.

‘He though he was doing what was right and he was trying to suggest to Chauvin that they should roll him on his side,’ said Gray. 

‘He’s got a 20-year veteran and I know while people say “well, so what”. Well what do you mean so what – the police force is like the military. You have someone with 20 years’ experience and you have someone with four days – and Officer King has three days,’ Gray argued.

‘Put yourself in that position as this officer who was trained by this guy.

‘[Chauvin] was one of his training officers,’ he said.

Gray also pointed out that it was Lane who tried to resuscitate Floyd when medics arrived on the scene.   

‘He was attempting to revive Mr Floyd – he didn’t want to see the man die,’ he said.   

The claims of Lane’s innocence come as his family launched a fundraising page asking for help to foot the bill for his legal fees. 

He is being held in Hennepin County jail on $1 million bond.

It was revealed last week that Lane had a string of criminal offenses and traffic violations before he became a cop.

Lane was convicted of seven charges in total, among them obstructing legal process and one charge of damaging property.

He had also worked a variety of jobs in the service industry before he was hired as a police officer.

Lane’s personnel file has been released by his former employer, the Minneapolis Police Department, but with many sections redacted.

His file notes that Lane left high school before graduating and then held at least ten jobs between 2010 and 2017.

During this time, he pursued his GED and a college degree as he worked as a laborer, a telemarketer, a server, a bartender, a security guard and a sales associate.

In 2017, he began a job as a juvenile correctional officer and assistant probation officer, the file states.

Lane started as a police cadet in 2019 and was a rookie on the force, only on his fourth full-time shift, when on Memorial Day he was one of the first officers to respond to claims that Floyd, 46, had attempted to use a counterfeit $20 bill.

He now faces 40 years in jail over his part in Floyd’s killing.