Former officer’s attorney: Wright’s death not a crime
Prosecutor calls case ‘totally avoidable’
MINNEAPOLIS – The suburban Minneapolis police officer who said she meant to use her Taser instead of her gun when she shot and killed Black motorist Daunte Wright made a “blunder of epic proportions” and did not have “a license to kill,” a prosecutor told jurors Monday.
Kim Potter’s attorney Earl Gray, though, countered during closing arguments in Potter’s manslaughter trial that the former Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, officer made an honest mistake by pulling her handgun instead of her Taser and that shooting Wright wasn’t a crime.
“In the walk of life, nobody’s perfect. Everybody makes mistakes,” Gray said. “My gosh, a mistake is not a crime. It just isn’t in our freedom-loving country.”
Prosecutor Erin Eldridge said during her summation that Wright’s death was “entirely preventable. Totally avoidable.”
“She drew a deadly weapon,” Eldridge said. “She aimed it. She pointed it at Daunte Wright’s chest, and she fired.”
Gray argued that Wright “caused the whole incident” because he tried to flee from police during a traffic stop.
“Daunte Wright caused his own death, unfortunately,” he asserted.
Potter mistakenly grabbed her gun instead of her Taser because the traffic stop “was chaos,” Gray said.
The jury was set to deliberate once closing arguments concluded.
Potter, 49, told jurors on Friday that she “didn’t want to hurt anybody,” saying during her sometimes tearful testimony that she shouted a warning about using her Taser on Wright after she saw fear in a fellow officer’s face.
Playing Potter’s body camera video from the incident frame by frame, Eldridge sought to raise doubts about Potter’s testimony that she fired after seeing a look of fear on the face of another officer who was leaning into the car’s passenger-side door and trying to handcuff Wright.
The defense argued that he was at risk of being dragged.
“Playing the video not at the right speed where it showed chaos, playing it as slow as possible ... that’s the rabbit hole of misdirection,” Gray said.
Potter is charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of Wright, 20, who was pulled over for having expired license plate tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror.
Judge Regina Chu told jurors that intent is not part of the charges against Potter and that the state doesn’t have to prove she tried to kill Wright.
The judge said to prove first-degree manslaughter, prosecutors have to prove that Potter caused Wright’s death while committing the crime of reckless handling of a firearm.
This means they must prove that she committed a conscious or intentional act while handling or using a firearm that creates a substantial or unjustifiable risk that she was aware of and disregarded, and that she endangered safety.
For second-degree manslaughter, the state must prove that she acted with culpable negligence, meaning she consciously took a chance of causing death or great bodily harm.