|
Post by Admin on Dec 20, 2021 18:41:17 GMT
Kim Potter trial livestream - Closing arguments 14,934 watching now • Started streaming 3 hours ago • Kim Potter Trial Day 9 - Closing arguments, case goes to jury for deliberation
Kim Potter, a former Brooklyn Center police officer, is charged with manslaughter for shooting and killing 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black man, during a traffic stop earlier this year. Closing statements will begin on Monday, with the case then expected to go to the jury for deliberation.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 20, 2021 22:37:12 GMT
A prosecutor on Monday urged jurors to hold a former Minnesota police officer criminally responsible for a "colossal screw-up, a blunder of epic proportions" that ended in the fatal shooting of a Black motorist.
Assistant Attorney General Erin Eldridge said defendant Kim Potter, a former Brooklyn Center police officer, improperly disregarded a series of risks when she drew her service weapon, shot and killed Daunte Wright this year.
Potter, who is white, has said she accidentally pulled a Glock when she was trying to deploy a Taser to subdue Wright, who was fleeing from arrest on a misdemeanor weapons warrant.
But Eldridge insisted that Potter shouldn't have even used a Taser on Wright, who was mortally wounded and drove a short distance before slamming into another car seconds later.
"It goes to show that she made a series of bad choices that led to her shooting and killing Daunte Wright. It goes to her disregard of all the risks," Eldridge told a Minneapolis jury.
"Members of the jury, this was no little 'oopsies.' 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. 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."
Potter has pleaded not guilty to first- and second-degree manslaughter charges.
A conviction on first-degree manslaughter would mean Potter improperly used “such force and violence that death of or great bodily harm to any person was reasonably foreseeable.”
The second-degree manslaughter charge alleges that Potter’s “culpable negligence” created “unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another.”
The charges carry a maximum sentence of 15 years and 10 years in prison, respectively.
Defense attorney Earl Gray insisted that his client can't be criminally punished for a tragic accident, one he compared to a deadly mishap at the hands of a doctor, pilot or lawyer.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 21, 2021 1:30:08 GMT
WATCH LIVE: Jury deliberates in trial of Kim Potter, former officer who killed Daunte Wright —Day 10
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 23, 2021 22:14:03 GMT
The jury in the manslaughter trial of former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter, who shot dead 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in April 2021, has found her guilty. The former police officer, who is white, had maintained that she made a tragic mistake when she grabbed her gun, instead of her Taser, and shot Wright, who was Black, when he was pulled over while driving in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center. But on Thursday the jury found Potter guilty of both of the charges she faced, of first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. Potter’s bail was revoked and she was led from court in handcuffs. Sentencing is due on 8 March. Shouts of “justice” rang out outside the courthouse in Minneapolis on Thursday afternoon as protesters who had braved freezing temperatures for days awaiting the outcome praised the verdict. Almost two hours after the conviction, Daunte’s parents, Katie and Aubrey Wright, who had sat holding hands and gulping in deep breaths as they waited for the jury’s pronouncement, emerged, accompanied by Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, who led the prosecution of the case. Aubrey Wright began to speak, as if to thank prosecutors, but choked up after two or three words and fell silent. Katie Wright described how she “sort of let out a yelp” when the verdict came down. Asked by reporters how she felt, she added: “That moment that I heard guilty on manslaughter one [in the first degree] – every single emotion that you could imagine running through your body.” Ellison pointed out how there would be “an empty chair” at the dinner table of Daunte’s family over the holidays, after the loss of the 20-year-old, who also had a baby son called Daunte Jr. Ellison said the young man had had his whole life ahead of him and was proud to be a new father and loved his mother and siblings and “his whole beautiful family”. The attorney general chose to describe the verdict as “a degree of accountability”, rather than justice, because a life lost could not be brought back. But demonstrators outside the courthouse, braced for the possibility of yet another acquittal after a fatal police shooting, became celebratory, with a brass band showing up and a man playing When the saints come marching in on a trombone as people danced.
|
|
|
Post by Admin on Dec 25, 2021 0:23:05 GMT
Kim Potter, a veteran former Minnesota police officer, has been found guilty of manslaughter for the fatal shooting of a black motorist in April.
The 49-year-old claimed she had mistakenly drawn her gun instead of a Taser and killed Daunte Wright, 20, during a traffic stop.
His death occurred at a time of high tensions, with the trial over George Floyd's murder taking place nearby.
Potter's sentencing has been scheduled for 18 February.
|
|