Kim Potter, the former Minnesota police officer who shot and killed Daunte Wright when she drew her handgun instead of her Taser during a traffic stop in April, has been found guilty on two counts of manslaughter.
Jurors deliberated since Monday before coming to a unanimous verdict. Potter, who had served as an officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota for 26 years, will be sentenced at a later date.
To quote npr.com:
Prosecutors did not dispute that the shooting was an accident. But they said that in her 26 years on the force, Potter had undergone extensive firearm and Taser training, including how to avoid confusing the two. They turned to use-of-force experts and the police department’s policy handbook to argue that the use of a Taser was inappropriate to begin with.
“She drew a deadly weapon, she aimed it, she pointed it at Daunte Wright’s chest and she fired,” Assistant Attorney General Erin Eldridge said during the state’s closing argument on Monday.
“This was no little oopsie. This was not putting the wrong date on a check. This was not entering the wrong password somewhere. This was a colossal screw-up, a blunder of epic proportions,” Eldridge said. “It was precisely the thing she had been warned about for years, and she had been trained to prevent it.”
Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines recommend approximately seven years for the first-degree charge and four years for the second-degree charge, though prosecutors are likely to advocate for a longer sentence.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1066012247/kim-potter-trial-daunte-wright
