Potter, former cop who shot Daunte Wright to death, will testify: att’y

The white former Minnesota police officer on trial for fatally shooting a Black man during a traffic stop after allegedly mistaking her firearm for a Taser will testify in her own defense at trial.

Jury selection began Tuesday in the trial of Kim Potter, who faces first- and second-degree manslaughter charges for the killing of Daunte Wright during a traffic stop while she was working for the Brooklyn Center, Minn., police department. Defense attorney Paul Engh revealed, while questioning potential jurors, that Potter would take the stand.

“Officer Potter will testify and tell you what she remembers happened, so you will know not just from the video but from the officers at the scene and Officer Potter herself what was occurring,” Engh told one potential juror.

Potter pulled over 20-year-old Wright on April 11 for expired license plates. She soon realized Wright had a warrant for his arrest. Potter and a cop she was training at the time, Anthony Luckey, then moved to arrest him.

Wright pulled away and got back into the driver’s seat of his vehicle. Footage from Potter’s body cam showed her yelling, “Taser, Taser!” before shooting Wright with her gun. Wright was able to drive a short distance before crashing. He was pronounced dead at the scene, while his girlfriend, who was in the passenger seat, was injured.

The incident sparked days of demonstrations nationwide against police brutality and racial injustice. Nearby Minneapolis was on edge at the time over the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who is serving 22½ years in prison for the killing of George Floyd.

Potter was initially charged with second-degree manslaughter in connection with the incident, but prosecutors added a count of first-degree manslaughter in September, a charge that she tried unsuccessfully to have dismissed. Her defense team is expected to argue that she did not intend to kill Wright.

Wright family attorneys said the focus should remain on Wright and the “utterly needless loss of his life.”

“This encounter was a pretextual, unnecessary stop of a young Black man for nothing more than a minor traffic infraction,” said civil rights attorneys Benjamin Crump, Antonio Romanucci and Jeff Storms in a statement on behalf of Wright’s family.

“We must look past the shameless victim blaming that has been and will be directed toward Daunte,” they said. “We must also not be fooled by the defense’s cries of an ‘innocent mistake.’ No reasonable officer can confuse their Taser for a gun, particularly a training officer who drew both of those weapons from her duty belt countless times. Daunte Wright should not have been stopped or shot. He should be here with us, hugging his parents, siblings and young son during this holiday season.”

At least six days have been set aside for jury selection. Dismissed jurors included two who said Potter, as a seasoned officer, should have known the difference between a Taser and a gun. Also declined was a man who candidly admitted his bias, though he insisted he could overcome it, and another who thought of Black Lives Matter as “Marxist Communist” and believed that Wright would be alive today if he had just followed instructions.

Opening statements could begin as soon as Dec. 8.