Senior US District Court Judge Paul Magnuson sentenced Chauvin to 252 months but subtracted seven months for time served.
US attorneys asked the court for Chauvin’s sentence to run concurrently with his state sentence of 22.5 years.
The US Bureau of Prisons will decide what facility Chauvin will be housed in.
Sarah Greenman, an assistant criminology professor at Hamline University, said life in federal prison is considered to be better than at state facilities.
“It’s less crowded in federal prison, there’s less safety concerns than in a state facility,” she said, adding there are fewer violent offenders in federal prisons, which also have bigger budgets.
The footage from a Minneapolis street showed Chauvin impassively kneeling on the 46-year-old Black man’s neck and back while he was handcuffed and lying prone in the street for more than 9 minutes, gasping for air and telling Minneapolis officers, “I can’t breathe.”
According to a court document filed by his attorney in late June, Chauvin spends most of his life in solitary confinement at a maximum-security state prison.
CNN’s Paul Vercammen reported from St. Paul, Minnesota, and Steve Almasy reported and wrote in Atlanta.
