The family of George Floyd is calling for an apology from the Minnesota Republican Party after delegates held a moment of silence at last weekend’s convention for Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering Floyd.

Chauvin is serving concurrent state and federal prison terms of 22.5 years and 21 years at a federal penitentiary in Texas. He was convicted in state court of murdering Floyd in May 2020 and later pleaded guilty to federal civil rights violations involving Floyd and a 14-year-old boy in a separate 2017 incident.

At last weekend’s GOP convention in Duluth, Minnesota, a delegate made a motion for a moment of silence for Chauvin, Minnesota Public Radio reported.

The convention’s presiding officer put the motion to a voice vote Saturday morning. Delegates in attendance approved it, and a moment of silence lasting about 10 seconds followed.

“The audacity of the Minnesota Republican Party to honor an individual who has both been convicted by a jury of his peers for the murder of a fellow human being, while at the same time violated a professional oath to protect and serve his community, is disgusting,” Floyd family attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci wrote Tuesday in a statement, according to The Hill.

The attorneys demanded that state GOP leaders “issue an immediate retraction of this immoral act and issue an apology to the family of George Floyd and to the people of Minnesota that they serve.”

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat whose office prosecuted Chauvin, was among those condemning the moment of silence. Ellison issued a statement Sunday saying he was “heartbroken and frankly shocked.”

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