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Former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane, who was 

 for violating George Floyd’s civil rights, will do his time at a low-security federal prison camp in Colorado.

A court order Tuesday directs Lane to report to the Federal Correctional Institution Englewood in the Denver suburb of Littleton on Aug. 30.

U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson had recommended that the Bureau of Prisons send Lane to the low-security prison camp in Duluth, closer to his home, but the bureau makes the final decisions on where to place inmates, including weighing safety concerns.

“He should be fine there,” said Lane's defense attorney, Earl Gray. 

According to the Bureau of Prisons website, FCI Englewood is a low-security prison for men with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp. It holds 1,032 inmates, including 97 at the camp. Housing is dormitory or cubicle style. Life there is highly regimented, including frequent head counts and having to wake at dawn. 

Mike Brandt, a Minneapolis-area defense attorney who has followed the case closely, said Lane's assignment made sense.

“They take into account a variety of factors including the offense for which they are sentenced, their criminal history score, recommendation from the judge, prior history of violence, etc.,” Brandt said “I think because this offense wasn’t necessarily a ‘violent’ offense and he had no prior record, his numbers were lower, qualifying him for a lower-security facility.”

Magnuson originally ordered Lane to surrender on Oct. 4, but moved up the date due to the complex interplay between his federal sentence and his sentencing in state court, which is set for Sept. 21, 

 to aiding and abetting second-degree murder.

 for former officers Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng, who were 

convicted of federal civil rights charges

 along with Lane in February. Magnuson 

 to 3 1/2 years and 3 years, respectively, and recommended that they go to Duluth or Yankton.

But Thao and Keung are scheduled to go on trial in state court Oct. 24 on separate charges of aiding and abetting both murder and manslaughter. They 

 for people convicted in federal court to be allowed to report for sentencing weeks or months later, 

 as Floyd’s death under the knee of former Officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, which sparked protests in Minneapolis and around the world in a 

Chauvin, who was sentenced to 22 1/2 years on state murder and manslaughter charges and 21 years on a federal civil rights charge, remains in the state’s maximum security prison at Oak Park Heights pending his transfer to an as-yet unannounced federal prison.

The Littleton prison has held other former law enforcement officers convicted of federal crimes, including former North Charleston, South Carolina, 

 who is serving 20 years on a civil rights charge for killing Walter Scott, an unarmed Black man who ran from a traffic stop in 2015; and former Orange County, California, 

 who was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in 2009 for witness tampering.

Other well-known former Englewood inmates have included former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who 

reported in 2012 to serve 14 years for corruption

 in 2020. Another was former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who served more than 12 years in Englewood and elsewhere starting in 2006 for securities fraud and other crimes.

 who was sentenced in 2015 to more than 15 years for child pornography offenses and illicit sexual conduct with a child.

Crime, Law and Justice

The murder of George Floyd

The Associated Press

Author

Former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane, who was sentenced to 2 1/2 years for violating George Floyd’s civil rights, has been ordered to report to a low-security federal prison camp in Colorado in two weeks.

Ex-cop Lane will report to Colorado prison in Floyd killing

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