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Derek Chauvin has recently been sentenced for the murder of George Floyd, and as part of the sentencing he will be required to register as a predatory offender upon release.

However, Chauvin was sentenced for 3rd degree murder. According to an official Minnesota website:

A person is treated as a predatory offender if the person has committed felony criminal sexual conduct or certain other designated sex crimes, kidnapping, or false imprisonment

It seems clear that this is analagous to the status of 'sex offender' in most other states. Why is Chauvin required to register (as reprehensible as his crime obviously was), given that he was not convicted of a sexual offense, kidnapping, or false imprisonment?

confusednonlawyer
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1 Answers1

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(Lots of digging)

https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609.341 The above is a series of definitions for the purposes of criminal statues.

Way down (noting that the page notes that this section was amended in 2021, so almost certainly in response to this case, given the amount of attention it has received), as subdivision 22, we have the definition:

Subd. 22.Predatory crime. "Predatory crime" means a felony violation of section 609.185 (first-degree murder), 609.19 (second-degree murder), 609.195 (third-degree murder), 609.20 (first-degree manslaughter), 609.205 (second-degree manslaughter), 609.221 (first-degree assault), 609.222 (second-degree assault), 609.223 (third-degree assault), 609.24 (simple robbery), 609.245 (aggravated robbery), 609.25 (kidnapping), 609.255 (false imprisonment), 609.498 (tampering with a witness), 609.561 (first-degree arson), or 609.582, subdivision 1 (first-degree burglary).

Thus, it looks like your Minnesota government website is not complete. However, the above seem like the most likely crimes to warrant inclusion on the register. The prominent reason in this instance is the registration will hamper Chauvin from regaining employment as a police officer in Minnesota or any other state.

Where I live, there are reports of "problematic officers" being "shuffled" between departments; this would explicitly prevent that.

sharur
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