EX-COP GUILTY IN SLAY
White officer yelled ‘taser’ but fired gun, killing Black driver
The former Minnesota cop who said she mistook her gun for her Taser during an arrest was found guilty of manslaughter Thursday in the death of Daunte Wright.
Kim Potter, who fatally shot the Black man in a Minneapolis suburb on April 11, sat stone-faced in the Minneapolis courtroom, showing little emotion as the verdict was read, a far cry from her teary testimony earlier this week.
Potter, 49, was remanded without bail until her sentencing, over her defense lawyer’s objections. Attorney Paul Engh argued that Potter is not a threat to the public or a flight risk and that, as a “devoted Catholic,” she deserved to be home for the holidays.
Katie Wright, Daunte’s mother let out a cry of relief as she learned Potter’s fate.
Wright said she felt “every single emotion that you could imagine running through your body.”
The Wright family said they are “relieved.” “From the unnecessary and overreaching tragic traffic stop to the shooting that took his life, that day will remain a traumatic one for this family and yet another example for America of why we desperately need change in policing, training and protocols,” a family statement read.
Potter was a 26-year law enforcement veteran when she killed Wright in the north Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center. She testified that she meant to fire an electroshock charge from her Taser, but let off a single fatal bullet instead.
“I remember yelling, ‘Taser, Taser, Taser,’
and nothing happened, and then he told me I shot him,” Potter testified through tears last week. “I’m sorry it happened.”
Prosecutors said Potter should have known better than to mistake her Taser and her firearm.
“This was not putting the wrong date on a check,” Minnesota assistant attorney general Erin Eldridge said Monday in closing arguments. “This was not entering the wrong password somewhere. This was a colossal screw-up, a blunder of epic proportions. It was precisely the thing she had been warned about for years and she was trained to prevent it.”
Outside the courthouse, crowds celebrated with music and signs.
“Daunte could have done anything,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said.
“What we know is that he was a young,
new dad and he was so proud of his son, Daunte Jr. We know that he loved his mom and loved his dad and loved his siblings and his big beautiful family... All of us miss out on who Daunte could have been.”
The guilty verdict is not justice, Ellison said, rather accountability and said he would seek a fair sentence for Potter when she goes back before a judge in February. She faces at least 25 years behind bars.
The jury, comprised of nine white people, two Asians and one Black person, deliberated for four days before reaching a verdict.
Potter’s defense team argued that if she meant to pull the trigger, she would’ve been justified based on Wright’s actions.
Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was driving through Brooklyn Center with his girlfriend when Potter and a trainee officer, Anthony Luckey, pulled him over for a busted taillight.
After they stopped Wright, the pair learned there was a warrant for his arrest on a misdemeanor gun charge and asked him to step out of the car.
When the officers moved to arrest Wright, he got back into his car and tried to drive away. That was when Potter threatened to use her Taser on him.
Potter resigned two days later during mass protests over the shooting.
“Kim Potter’s defense team may have done more harm than good by advocating for the position that even if she had intended to fire her gun, that she would have been justified to use deadly force,” former defense attorney DeWitt Lacy, who was not involved in the case, told the Daily News. “That approach just muddied the waters for her defense.”
Prosecutors also focused on footage from Potter’s body-camera, which showed her holding the gun for 5-6 seconds before pulling the trigger. They emphasized that she took multiple Taser training courses shortly before she killed Wright.
The verdict came down in the same building — Hennepin County Courthouse — where Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd in April.