Thomas Kiernan Lane (©Hennepin County Jail)

Thomas Kiernan Lane, 37, was freed from the Hennepin Country Jail in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States at around 4:00 p.m. on June 10, 2020. The former Minneapolis Police Department officer accepted $750,000 cash bail with conditions.

Lane is planning to file a motion to dismiss the charges against him and his next hearing is scheduled for June 29, 2020. His attorney Earl Gray, 76, refused to reveal his client’s whereabouts for safety reasons but said the former cop is now back living with his wife.

“Now we can watch what happens next from outside,” Gray told the Minnesota Star Tribune. “We will bring a motion to dismiss and hopefully it will be granted.”

A website for donations was set up by Lane’s family. Released on conditions, he will be monitored during release and will be prohibited from carrying a gun and taking part in any law enforcement activities.

On May 25, 2020, Lane was on his fourth day as a Minneapolis Police Department officer. In the evening of that day, he helped his training officer Derek Michael Chauvin, 44, arrest George Floyd for passing counterfeit currency along with another rookie cop J Alexander Kueng, 26, and veteran cop Tou Nmn Thao, 34, in Minneapolis.

While Chauvin was kneeling on Floyd’s neck, Lane and Kueng assisted their training officer by holding the arrestee’s legs and back, respectively and Thao was watching and interacting with the bystanders who were trying to intervene. Floyd died while in the custody of the four Minneapolis Police Department officers, who were fired on May 26, 2020.

Chauvin was arrested on May 29, 2020. He is facing charges of third-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter and second-degree murder.

Lane, Kueng and Thao were charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder while committing a felony and with aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter with culpable negligence. On June 4, 2020, the three made their first appearances in Hennepin County District Court in Minneapolis and none of them spoke, according to KARE 11.

Neither Thao nor Kueng has posted bail. They are still in the Hennepin Country Jail while Chauvin is detained in the Minnesota Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Oak Park Heights, Minnesota.

On June 8, 2020, Gray discussed Lane’s participation in Floyd’s fatal arrest in an interview with  Chris Cuomo on “Cuomo Prime Time Monday.” The lawyer said, “It wasn’t a violent resistance but it wasn’t a kind of non-resistance that an individual should do when police officers are arresting him.”

“He should get out of his vehicle and follow the orders of the police officers,” Gray said of Floyd. “He didn’t do that.”