
MINNEAPOLIS – A jury has convicted a former Minneapolis police officer of first- and second-degree manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright during an April traffic stop after she mistook her gun for her Taser.
The decision came after about 27 hours of deliberation by a mostly White jury. Kimberly Potter faces at least 11 years in prison and will be sentenced at a later date.
Prosecutors have filed a motion asking for a tougher sentence, citing aggregating factors including that Potter’s actions endangered others at the scene. Potter last week asked for a separate hearing on those issues and requested the judge, not the jury, to determine her sentence.
Potter, a former Brooklyn Center, Minn., police officer, was arrested April in the killing of Wright, an unarmed 20-year-old Black man who prosecutors say had initially been pulled over in the Minneapolis suburb because of expired tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror.
When officers discovered Wright had an outstanding arrest warrant for a gross misdemeanor weapons violation, they tried to arrest him. Wright struggled with another officer at the scene who was trying to handcuff him, and Potter, who is White, drew her gun and twice threatened to “Tase” Wright before firing a single shot, striking him in the chest.
Body-camera video captured the chaotic event, including Potter’s stunned reaction as she realized she had fired her handgun. “Holy s–t! I just shot him,” Potter yelled at another officer, according to video played repeatedly in court. “I grabbed the wrong f—–g gun. I shot him.”
“I’m going to go to prison,” Potter said a minute later, according to the video. “I killed a boy.”
The verdict comes after closing arguments in the case in which Potter’s defense attorney urged the jury to find his client not guilty of the charges, claiming that “she made a mistake” when she grabbed the wrong weapon in the heat of a chaotic moment.
“You can be trained forever, and under exigent circumstances, you can end up making a mistake,” Earl Gray, Potter’s defense attorney, told the jury. “Everybody makes mistakes. Nobody’s perfect, ladies and gentlemen. And this lady here made a mistake. And, my gosh, a mistake is not a crime.”
Gray accused Wright of sparking the events that led to his fatal shooting, arguing that if he had simply complied with officers’ commands, he’d still be alive. “Daunte Wright caused his own death, unfortunately,” Gray said. “That’s the cold hard facts, the evidence.”
But prosecutor Matthew Frank told the jury that there is “no mistake defense.”
“The judge will not give you an instruction that says a person is not guilty if they commit a mistake. That’s not the law, no matter how often the defense says ‘mistake,'” Frank said.
Prosecutors argued that Potter “was no rookie” and should have known better than to mistake her weapons.
“This was no little oopsie. … This was a colossal screw-up, a blunder of epic proportions,” prosecutor Erin Eldridge told the jury. “It was precisely the thing she had been warned about for years, and she was trained to prevent it. It was irreversible. And it was fatal.”
“The defense will tell you that Daunte Wright is somehow to blame in causing his own death. But make no mistake: We’re here because of the defendant’s actions,” Eldridge added. “This case is about the defendant’s rash and reckless conduct. It’s not about her being a nice person or a good person. Even nice people have to obey the law. … Carrying a badge and a gun is not a license to kill.”
Eldridge argued that the shooting was a “tragedy” of Potter’s own making. “That she was an officer does not make it OK. That she was on duty does not make it OK,” the prosecutor told the jury. “We trust the police to safeguard lives. The defendant shattered that trust when she shattered Daunte Wright’s heart.”
A predominantly White jury of six men and six women weighed the case for about 27 hours over three days beginning Monday afternoon. The 12 who are deliberating include six White men, three White women, two Asian women and one Black woman.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the jury hinted it might be deadlocked, returning to the courtroom to ask Hennepin County District Court Judge Regina Chu, who is overseeing the case, give them instructions on how to proceed if they could not reach a unanimous verdict. Chu urged them to find agreement and sent them back into deliberations.
The verdict comes after eight days of testimony from more than two dozen witnesses including several police officers, use-of-force experts and a psychologist who has studied cases of weapons confusion among law enforcement officers.
Prosecutors argued that Potter, a 26-year veteran of the Brooklyn Center force, not only violated her decades of training but was reckless in her decision to use a weapon at the scene at all – pointing to training that warns of the dangers of firing either a Taser or a gun at someone behind the wheel of a car.
But Potter’s attorneys repeatedly sought to undermine that argument, telling the jury that she made an “action error” during a chaotic moment when she feared for the safety of another officer. They solicited testimony from numerous police officers, including those testifying for the prosecution, who said they believed Potter had the right to fire a Taser or a gun at the scene under department policy.
The defense rested its case Friday with testimony from Potter, who cried on the stand as she recalled a “chaotic” scene leading up to her shooting Wright. The former officer told the jury she recalled seeing “fear” in the eyes of an officer on the opposite side of the car when Wright jumped into his vehicle as officers tried to arrest him.
But the prosecution challenged Potter’s claim that she grabbed her weapon because she was trying to protect a fellow officer from being dragged by Wright’s vehicle. They pointed to body-camera video they say raises doubts about whether she could even see the officer on the other side of the car as well as her statements at the scene, in which she said nothing about fearing for the safety of other officers.
Potter claimed she did not realize she had fired her gun instead of her Taser until she heard Wright cry out that she had shot him. “We were trying to keep him from driving away … and it just went chaotic,” Potter told the jury in her first public recounting of the deadly incident. “I remember yelling ‘Taser, Taser, Taser!’ and nothing happened. And then he told me I shot him.”
Potter did not use Wright’s name during her testimony, repeatedly referring to him as “the driver.” She claimed not to remember anything in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, including statements she made about potentially going to prison.
The former officer began crying and shaking as a prosecutor pressed her on the events of that day, pointing out she had not offered medical assistance to Wright or informed responding officers that she had shot the man.
“I’m sorry it happened. I’m so sorry,” Potter cried out, sobbing into her hands. “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.”
Wright – who had cried out “Ah, he shot me!” as the bullet pierced his chest – drove his vehicle a short distance down the street and crashed. Responding medical personnel were unable to revive him, and he was pronounced dead at the scene. A medical examiner testified that the single bullet had pierced his heart and lungs, killing him within seconds to minutes.
In her testimony Friday, Potter acknowledged that the dangers of confusing a Taser and a gun had been “mentioned” in her training. “But it wasn’t something we were physically trained on,” the former officer said.
Despite prosecution objections, the jury was allowed to hear testimony from Potter’s former colleagues that they believed, on the basis of their training and knowledge of department policy, that Potter had the right to use deadly force at the scene if she believed another officer was in danger.
“I saw no violation … of policy, procedure or law,” Timothy Gannon, the former Brooklyn Center police chief who resigned in the aftermath of the Wright shooting, testified last week.
Although prosecutors pointedly told the jury they were not alleging that Potter intentionally killed Wright, they argued that her recklessness led to the fatal shooting and endangered others at the scene, including her fellow officers and the female passenger in Wright’s car who sobbed on the stand as she recalled the shooting and spoke of her continuing trauma.
Alayna Albrecht-Payton, 20, who had recently started dating Wright, recalled that she heard a bang and suddenly the car was moving head-on into another vehicle. She recounted trying to stem Wright’s bleeding by pressing on it with a sweater or a towel “like I had seen in movies and TV shows” but said he was just “gasping.”
She told the jury of picking up a FaceTime call from Katie Bryant, Wright’s mother who had been on the phone with him at the time of the shooting, and pointing the camera toward Wright’s lifeless body.
“I was just screaming, ‘They shot him! They shot him!’ And then I pointed the camera on him, and I’m so sorry I did that,” Albrecht-Payton said, her testimony almost unintelligible as she sobbed.
Asked by a prosecutor why she was sorry, Albrecht-Payton, her voice shaking, replied, “No mom should have to see that on video call. … I know I hurt her by doing that.”
Bryant testified that she had rushed to the scene and saw her son’s crashed car and a body covered by a sheet.
“I didn’t want to believe that it was my son laying there on the ground, but I could tell it was him because of his tennis shoes,” Bryant said crying. She told the jury that she began biting the inside of her cheeks – so hard that it left lasting scars – in hopes of waking herself up from a “bad dream.”
“It was the worst day of my life,” Bryant told the jury.
Potter, 49, resigned after the April 11 incident, which took place in the final weeks of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial in the death of George Floyd. Wright’s killing sparked fresh unrest across the Twin Cities, including clashes between demonstrators and police in a region still deeply on edge after Floyd’s killing.
Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the courthouse as the verdict was read, many carrying placards printed with an image of Wright’s face.
(c) 2021, The Washington Post · Holly Bailey
{Matzav.com}
Can’t believe how many times it says white in this article.
that’s the point. That’s why the mob got their way today. They were cheering outside the courthouse. Sick
On the one hand “Odom Mued L’Olam” so she probably is guilty.
OTOH when I see the emphasis on “white cop killed black man” it make me question the verdict and if the case was really judged in it merits as opposed to skin color of those involved
Your premise is incorrect as to whether or not she is guilty. אדם מועד לעולם doesn’t define guilt necessarily, it more so defines responsibility.
I strongly suggest you learn the sugya better.
What a shame that a shvartza killed because had it been a white person, no one would have known anything about it.
The victim was a convicted thug but nonetheless this incompetent female had no right to murder him. She was only hired because she is a woman. So feminism has killed a black man. Wonderful.
Your comment is beyond stupid, This officer had 28 years of experience, She wasn’t hired because of gender.
it will go out on Appeal. Not surprised it happened in Minnesota and the Judge was quite hostile towards Potter. The judge forced the jury to come to a decision. It looked like a hung jury until the Judge put the pressure on. Otherwise, the lead news tonight would have been riots.
Washington DC: Black cop shoots and kills white lady on January 6, 2020 Cop exonerated without trial.
Minnesota: White female cop shoots black male. Cop convicted and will be incarcerated.
Problem?
What’s coming next – riots, looting, and “peaceful” Movement protests, or statues to Duante next to George?
I still want another free 72 inch plasma tv from my local Target store before I burn it down.
Free thought. Referendum on women in the police?
An accident? Who does not regard police work as hard? Will we have fewer honest police applicants? Think of this case detrimentally I think. It seems the beds of our officers should sleep better than rage sent worry about plaster jury strike outs. I think it is curious but Hashem has his kingdom. Girls may want new jobs.
Okay. Gotcha.