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Sept. 16 (UPI) -- Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on Thursday pleaded not guilty to violating the civil rights of a teenager in 2017. Chauvin, who is serving a 22.5-year sentence in prison for murdering George Floyd last year, entered the plea during a video conference in federal court.
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The plea comes after a federal grand jury indicted him in May for willfully depriving a 14-year-old boy of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a police officer. The second count of the indictment said Chauvin used his knee on the neck and upper back of the teen to restrain him while he "was lying prone, handcuffed and unresisting, also resulting in bodily injury."
The Justice Department said Chauvin also held the teen by the throat and struck him multiple times in the head with a flashlight during the 2017 arrest.
Chauvin also faces federal civil rights charges for his arrest of Floyd in 2020, during which he kneeled on Floyd's neck while he laid prone on the ground, repeatedly saying he couldn't breathe. He pleaded not guilty to those charges Tuesday.
Chauvin was found guilty in June on state charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for Floyd's death.
