THE US Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from the ex-police officer who held back bystanders as George Floyd was killed.

Tou Thao held a crowd of concerned people back, as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine-and-a-half minutes.

During a federal trial in February 2022, he along with two other former officers, Alexander Kueng, 28, and Thomas Lane, 38, were convicted of depriving Floyd of his right to medical care.

Thao was given a three-and-half year sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights. According to a MSN report, the Supreme Court rejected Thao’s appeal on Monday.

No further comments were released about the decision.

Thao is serving four years and nine months for aiding and abetting manslaughter, after he was found guilty in May 2023. He is serving this concurrently with a three-and-a-half year federal sentence.

Thao had argued that prosecutors failed to prove his actions on the day that Floyd died were willful, and claims he was deprived a fair trial.

He also had testified that he simply acted as a “human traffic cone” during the incident in Minneapolis in May 2020.

Publicity

In November, Chauvin also had his murder conviction appeal rejected by the same court. His legal team argued he was denied a fair trial because of the publicity surrounding the case.

The ex- Minneapolis police officer was stabbed 22 times at Tucson Federal Correctional Institution, on November 24.

Fellow in-mate John Turscak, 52, was charged with attempted murder after he attacked Chauvin with a homemade knife at the library of the Tucson federal prison in Arizona .

Floyd’s death sparked global protests demanding an end to police brutality and racism.  

A bystander captured the incident on video where the 46-year-old was heard saying “I can’t breathe”.

Police officers had accused him of using a fake $20 bill at a nearby shop.

In June 2021, Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison for the murder. It was the first time a police officer in the state of Minneapolis had been convicted of killing a black man.