By VOA News*
Officials in the U.S. and overseas are voicing wide support for a white police officer’s murder conviction Tuesday in the death last year of a Black man, George Floyd, with President Joe Biden calling it a “much too rare” outcome in contentious confrontations between white police and minority suspects.
Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris praised the decision hours after a racially diverse jury in Minneapolis convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin of two types of murder and manslaughter. Minutes later, he was handcuffed and jailed and now faces years in prison, when he is sentenced in eight weeks.
Biden, who phoned Floyd’s family after the verdict, called it “a step forward,” but all too rare moment of justice. Studies have shown that in most such U.S. cases, police are either cleared of wrongdoing without charges or acquitted in trials.
Biden said systemic racism in the U.S. is a “stain on our nation’s soul,” while saying the verdict “can be a giant step forward in the march toward justice.”
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