Daunte Wright
In April 2021, 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black man, was shot at a traffic stop only miles away from where Derek Chauvin's trial was held. According to Chief Tim Gannon of the Brooklyn Center Police Department, police pulled over Wright for a traffic violation regarding expired registration tags. The officer then found out that he had a warrant for Wright's arrest. When the police tried to detain him, there was a brief struggle, and released footage shows an officer pointing a handgun at him and yelling "Taser." The officer then shot him and he died shortly after. The officer who shot Wright was identified as Kim Potter, a 26-year veteran of the Brooklyn Center Police Department. She resigned from the police and was arrested and taken into custody, facing second-degree manslaughter. Daunte Wright's mother told reporters that he had called her when he was being pulled over and said that the police pulled him over for having air fresheners hanging from his rearview mirror (The New York Times). There is controversy over whether Potter intended to kill Wright or mixed up her weapons, as claimed. Tim Gannon, the former chief of police, described it as an "accidental discharge", but state investigators determined that she had her Taser on her left side and her gun on her right, so she would need to use her left hand to pull out her Taser. However, she used her right hand to draw her gun to shoot Wright (Bogel-Burroughs and Bosman). Minnesota judge Regina M. Chu ruled in May that there was probable cause to support the case against Potter (Broaddus, Adrienne, et al.).
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Trial and Verdict
In December 2021, Potter was convicted of first and second-degree manslaughter, facing at least a decade in prison. The body camera video of Potter played a key role in her trial and conviction, according to experts and analysts (Nickeas). Lawyers on both sides agreed that Potter made an error and drew the wrong weapon, so the main questions of the trial focused on whether she should have realized she was holding a gun and whether she should have used weapons in the first place. Potter's defense team called her actions a mistake rather than a crime, and asserted that her use of force was appropriate. When she was questioned, Potter cried and stated that she "didn't want to hurt anybody" (Romo, Vanessa, et al.). When she was cross-examined, Potter said that Wright had not threatened the officers nor did she help him after shooting him. The jury had to decide whether her error was reckless and criminal, or an unfortunate accident that does not count as a crime, and ultimately found her guilty (Sanchez, Ray, et al.).
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