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Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

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Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#1

Post by raison de arizona »

The trial has begun, she is apparently going to testify. Some info:
Opening statements to begin in trial of Kimberly Potter, ex-cop who killed Daunte Wright

Opening statements in the trial of a suburban Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright during a routine traffic stop are expected Wednesday in the same courtroom where another ex-cop was convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd.

Officer Kimberly Potter, 49, faces first- and second-degree manslaughter charges in a homicide her lawyers have suggested resulted from her mistaking her gun for a Taser in April. Potter has pleaded not guilty and faces at least a decade in prison if convicted.
:snippity:
Just as video footage played a crucial role in the case against Chauvin, body camera video is expected to be critical in the trial against Potter, who is White.

In the footage, Potter can be heard yelling "Taser" repeatedly before she points her handgun and shoots the unarmed Wright.
After firing, Potter is heard yelling: "Holy s***! I just shot him!"


Potter's testimony could also be crucial. Defense attorney Paul Engh told a prospective juror that Potter will take the stand.
:snippity:
Wright was driving on a Sunday afternoon in April when officers pulled him over for an expired tag, police said. The amended criminal complaint said Wright was also stopped because his car "had an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror."

During the stop, officers learned he had an outstanding warrant and attempted to arrest him.
:snippity:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/08/us/kim-p ... index.html

The actual body cam footage is at the link. She clearly has her handgun out while shouting "TASER TASER TASER" and seems genuinely shocked when she shoots him. He clearly resisted arrest. It's really a tragic situation.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#2

Post by raison de arizona »

John Curtis is a turd, just posting for the video.


Moar words from the prosecution's opening statement:
► Show Spoiler
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#3

Post by Kendra »

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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#4

Post by raison de arizona »

Not surprised, typical FoxNews spin that the victim deserved it. I dunno how bad of a dude Wright was, I do know that he shouldn't have been executed on the side of the road. I believe that the officer truly made an error though, and didn't intend to kill him, and in fact _did_ intend to tase him. It will be interesting to see how the trial goes.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#5

Post by filly »

raison de arizona wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 1:58 pm
Not surprised, typical FoxNews spin that the victim deserved it. I dunno how bad of a dude Wright was, I do know that he shouldn't have been executed on the side of the road. I believe that the officer truly made an error though, and didn't intend to kill him, and in fact _did_ intend to tase him. It will be interesting to see how the trial goes.
I saw a snippet or her lawyer's opening statement. He said that when Wright "moved" she knew "he was going to kill his partner." So I guess the defense is that it was an accident, but a justified shooting nevertheless.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#6

Post by Foggy »

Should have been resolved without a trial. :nope:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#7

Post by Foggy »

A jury needs to decide facts. The only fact that needs to be decided is, did she know it was a taser? Everything else is well documented.

Which requires mind-reading at a distance in time and space, and is actually pretty clear already.

Can they possibly decide - beyond a reasonable doubt - that she knew it was a gun? They have enough evidence to read her mind as of that moment, and they're so sure they all vote to convict her for intentionally killing him?

Nope. :nope:
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#8

Post by filly »

Foggy wrote: Thu Dec 09, 2021 7:21 am A jury needs to decide facts. The only fact that needs to be decided is, did she know it was a taser? Everything else is well documented.

Which requires mind-reading at a distance in time and space, and is actually pretty clear already.

Can they possibly decide - beyond a reasonable doubt - that she knew it was a gun? They have enough evidence to read her mind as of that moment, and they're so sure they all vote to convict her for intentionally killing him?

Nope. :nope:
So she's charged with first and second degree manslaughter. Per PBSNewshour:
First-degree manslaughter in this case means prosecutors allege that Potter caused Wright’s death while committing a misdemeanor — the “reckless handling or use of a firearm so as to endanger the safety of another with such force and violence that death or great bodily harm to any person was reasonably foreseeable.”

The second-degree manslaughter charge alleges that she caused his death “by her culpable negligence,” meaning that Potter “caused an unreasonable risk and consciously took a chance of causing death or great bodily harm” to Wright, while using or possessing a firearm.

Neither charge requires prosecutors to prove Potter intended to kill Wright.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/wha ... ghts-death
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#9

Post by Foggy »

Wow, filly, I knew some real lawyer would chop that one up, and rightly so, but tell me.

So the question is "reckless handling" vs. "consciously took a chance". Got it.

However, that's what I said. If she didn't know it was a gun, it was probably reckless (Can't you tell the difference?). If she did know it was really a gun it was probably "consciously" taking a chance of killing him. So same thing, the only question of fact can only be resolved by mind-reading, and they have to do such a great job of mind-reading that they vote beyond a reasonable doubt that they know what was going on in her head at the time.

I just can't see it.

And it looks bad to have a DA crapping on a good cop who made a mistake.

They should have settled it.
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#10

Post by raison de arizona »

Jury Begins Deliberations in Kim Potter’s Trial for Daunte Wright’s Death: Live Updates
:snippity:
Body camera videos of the shooting showed Ms. Potter, 49, shouting that she was going to stun Mr. Wright with her Taser and yelling “Taser! Taser! Taser!” immediately before firing a single bullet into Mr. Wright’s chest from her service gun. In the videos, a distraught Ms. Potter is seen telling fellow officers that she “grabbed the wrong gun,” using an expletive, and then collapsing to the ground, sobbing.

Two days after the shooting, Ms. Potter resigned from the police force. Testifying last week before the jurors who will decide her fate, Ms. Potter said she was “so sorry” for what had happened, and sobbed intensely on the witness stand. “I didn’t want to hurt anybody,” she added.

Prosecutors do not dispute that the shooting was an accident, but they contend that Ms. Potter acted so recklessly and dangerously that she should be imprisoned. They have charged her with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter, either of which would most likely mean several years in prison if she is convicted.
:snippity:
Matt Frank, a prosecutor, said Kim Potter’s own words after she shot Daunte Wright indicate that “she did not believe deadly force was necessary.” He is referring to how, immediately after shooting Wright, she said she grabbed the wrong gun, collapsed to the ground and said, “I’m going to go to prison.”

The prosecutor adds that the defense’s argument that Daunte Wright caused his own death is “somewhat stunning to me,” and says that Kimberly Potter’s lawyers are making “factually wrong and legally wrong” arguments.
:snippity:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/12/20 ... trial-news
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#11

Post by RVInit »

I watched some of this trial and most of Potter's testimony. She wore a taser on her left side for 19 years, but still somehow mistook pulling the gun for the taser. Her supervisor testified that she made a (negative) comment about who she (mistakenly) thought Daunte Wright was during the stop prior to shooting Daunte. That sticks out, along with the fact that she was required to practice with the taser and gun multiple times. A prosecution expert on training/use of force testified that there have been only 20 instances of an officer accidentally pulling a taser instead of the gun, and most of those happened prior to most police force requiring officers to wear the taser on the side of their body opposite their "strong" hand - left handed wear it on their right side, right handed wear it on their left side.

That said, the defense brought a slew of her fellow officers, who all admitted to being personal friends of hers, to say how wonderful she was and was a peace loving, etc, etc person. The judge did not seem to be biased either way. She was pretty hard on both sides, holding them both to the law, and seemed when things were even she sided with the defense, which I think is the fair way to do it. She didn't allow the defense to bring in every crime or bad thing Daunte ever did in his life, they were allowed to bring in only what Officer Potter knew at the time of the event.

Hard to say what the jury will do in this case. The prosecution had a pretty strong case, there were lots of nuances involved, which I didn't take any notes on or anything like that. I had a hard time buying the argument that she meant to pull the taser, given that she made some pretty damning statements right after killing him. And she contradicted those statements under oath during her direct testimony. Which I didn't think was a "good look".

Her immediate response was to ask her supervisor to call her union representative and at no time did she (or any of the other officers) offer Mr. Wright any assistance whatsoever. Her body camera also showed that she had a piece of paper in her right hand and she moved it to her left hand prior to drawing the gun with her right hand. I think the prosecutor did something deliberate, which I found interesting. She had no memory whatsoever of anything that tended to be difficult for her to answer for. But the prosecutor would make very minor misstatements of seemingly meaningless facts, which she would correct every single time. So, the memory was amazing when it came to little things, which she demonstrated over and over and over in front of the jury, but yet couldn't remember anything that she was required to have to explain to the jury. I do believe the prosecutor may have done that on purpose to make that point to the jury. I didn't watch the closing though. But I can imaging the prosecutor reminding the jury of her peculiar memory issues, which came and went according to how it best helped her on the stand.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#12

Post by p0rtia »

Thanks for the run-down :bighug:

I'll be shocked if they don't acquit.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#13

Post by RVInit »

p0rtia wrote: Mon Dec 20, 2021 2:44 pm Thanks for the run-down :bighug:

I'll be shocked if they don't acquit.
I will be surprised too. All her police officer friends came into court one after another to sing her praises as a peace loving and careful person. And all of them admitted to being personal friends with her in addition to being a colleague.

The most interesting was the former Chief of Police. He came across as a seriously angry person on cross examination. He resigned because he said the mayor and others were trying to force him to fire Potter on the same day the shooting happened. He said he would have been fired himself had he not resigned, so he resigned in order to keep his retirement, etc. And yet, the mayor and others somehow did not require the acting Chief to fire Potter. Potter actually resigned of her own accord two days after the shooting. I remember thinking that thank goodness this former police chief resigned, as I'm not sure any police force really needs a Chief with such anger issues as he obviously has. He was practically shouting at the prosecutor and really came across as a disgruntled and angry ex-employee. The prosecutor was very professional and quietly and coolly asked him questions as he continued to answer like an angry, petulant child who wasn't getting his own way.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#14

Post by RVInit »

I left out one of the most important pieces of testimony from the use of force expert. He testified that it was not appropriate for Potter to use EITHER her taser or her gun. Her trainee, officer Lucky, was standing in front of and slightly to the right of her when she pulled the trigger. The cartridge came out of the gun and hit Lucky in the face. The video also shows that she had no view of where the other officer was (he was right in the line of fire, along with the passenger).

The reason the taser was not appropriate in that situation is because Daunte was in a good position to take off in the car. When an officer uses a taser or shoots a person who is about to take off, that car becomes an unguided hazard that can harm others as the driver is incapacitated, whether by taser or bullet. That is why it wasn't appropriate even for her to use the taser on Mr. Wright at that point in time. And, in fact, that is exactly what happened. As Mr. Wright was dying the car he was driving hit another oncoming vehicle. Luckily, it was going slow enough not to seriously injure anyone else.

One of the lies Potter told during her initial interview is that she tased Wright because Officer Johnson was "in danger". The problem is that you can see from her body camera that Officer Lucky was in front of her the whole time until a moment before she pulled the trigger, and she couldn't see past him to even see where Officer Johnson was at that point in time. He testified that at no time was he in any kind of danger and he did not express to Potter that he needed her help (as she told investigators). That was one of the more problematic of her statements. She finally settled on "I don't know, I can't remember anything" as her answer to why she decided to use the taser on Mr. Wright.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#15

Post by RVInit »

She is charged with manslaughter in 1st degree and manslaughter in 2nd degree.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#16

Post by RVInit »

They jury came back with two questions yesterday. The first question was what happens if they can't agree on a verdict. The second question shows the defense definitely succeeded in getting at least some of the jury to go down rabbit holes that don't matter. They wanted to know if they could have her service revolver unlocked from it's box so they could hold it in their hands. That seems to suggest that at least one person wants to compare what the taser vs gun feels like in the hand. Which is somewhat of a win for the defense in the sense that this shouldn't even matter. The whole point of the use of force testimony was that it was inappropriate for her to draw either the gun or the taser. Regardless of which one she pulled, she was inappropriately causing a person who had control of a vehicle to become impaired, which turned the car into an uncontrolled danger to others.

The prosecutor put on a use of force witness that testified that he has been hired by both prosecutors and defense and that his ultimate opinion has at times helped the other side. The defense hired a guy that they used as a use of force expert who admitted on cross examination that he had been hired hundreds of times by police officers whose actions were under question and in every single case he testified that the officer was correct in using whatever force they used. Not even once in hundreds did he ever have the opinion the officer was in the wrong. I thought that made his opinion nearly worthless.

At any rate, it's definitely a win for the defense that there are clearly members of the jury who do not want to convict Potter, and, the jury is going down the rabbit hole of trying to make a determination about the gun vs the taser when she would have been wrong to make the decision to pull either weapon at all, according to the most credible use of force witness. I am pretty much expecting we are going to see another acquittal, probably today.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#17

Post by filly »

Or it could be a hung jury. There are clearly people who want to convict, which is why the jury is split (apparently).

Someone last night noted that the gun is unloaded and therefore not the same weight as Potter's was.

IDK, the color, the weight, the grips being differently sized, her 26 years of "experience", her failure to follow procedures would make me, as a juror, convict on 2d degree manslaughter, and I'd be damned if I would go along with acquittal for the sake of reaching a verdict.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#18

Post by RVInit »

filly wrote: Wed Dec 22, 2021 9:12 am Or it could be a hung jury. There are clearly people who want to convict, which is why the jury is split (apparently).

Someone last night noted that the gun is unloaded and therefore not the same weight as Potter's was.

IDK, the color, the weight, the grips being differently sized, her 26 years of "experience", her failure to follow procedures would make me, as a juror, convict on 2d degree manslaughter, and I'd be damned if I would go along with acquittal for the sake of reaching a verdict.
Same here. I was also troubled by her changing story. Her cross examination was fairly brutal in terms of pointing out her many conflicting statements. And also her seemingly selective memory. She claimed to have no memory whatsoever whenever any hard question was asked. And yet she would correct the prosecutor on minor details of seemingly insignificant facts. I think the prosecutor lulled her into doing that on purpose, I certainly would have. But then, I'm not a professional prosecutor and don't know if they use that kind of tactic when someone insists they don't remember anything. I think it's fair game to make minor "mistakes" during questioning to see if the person who has no memory bites and corrects those mistakes, which she did. Over and over again. I haven't finished listening to the rebuttal closing, but I expect to hear that prosecutor talk about the inconsistency in her memory as well as the inconsistencies in her testimony and initial statement. The prosecutors took turns in closing with the more experienced lead prosecutor handling the rebuttal, which, so far seems to have been a good choice. Not saying the other prosecutor was any less skilled, but I thought there was one thing she didn't handle especially well.

There is an issue of whether Daunte had control of the vehicle or not. And the one prosecutor could have explained it more thoroughly. Prior to Potter drawing her gun and yelling "taser, taser, taser", Daunte was fully under control of the other two cops. So, there was no need for her to use a taser to subdue him. However, once she draws and yells "taser" that is a signal to the other officers to take their hands off the subject. So, she actually caused Daunte to be in a position to take off by the very act of drawing the "taser" to subdue him, which was not actually even necessary. So, she simultaneously caused him to be "able" to flee (the other officers had to release him when they heard her yell "taser") and also cause him to be unable to maintain control of the vehicle, which he was now able to put into gear and take off. Making the vehicle dangerous, and in fact, he did hit another car as he tried to drive away during the last seconds of his life. He hit the other car because he became incapacitated pretty much as soon as hit foot hit the pedal.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#19

Post by noblepa »

My wife has become addicted to Court TV and has been watching the trial, so I've caught a little bit of it.

I don't think that Ms. Potter is a bad person. I don't believe that she had criminal intent in her mind at the time of the shooting. I also believe that she is genuinely remorseful.

However, there is a point at which simple negligence becomes criminally culpable. This is especially true of a police officer. We expect more of them. IMHO/IANAL opinion, she crossed that line. As an experienced officer and a training officer, to boot, it is hard to understand how she could have made such a mistake.

I'm not sure what her punishment should be, but I don't think that she should spend the rest of her life in prison. At the very least, she should never be allowed to be a LEO again, and that seems to have already happened. Even if she is acquitted, would any police force consider hiring her? I don't know what the law is in her state, but many states require that police officers be licensed. If it hasn't been already, her license should be permanently revoked. If she simply lets it lapse, that leaves the possibility that she could be re-instated in the future, something that I think should not happen.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#20

Post by RVInit »

I think Potter would be facing a maximum of 15 years on the most serious count and 10 years on the less serious count. I would assume her presumptive sentence would be far less since it would be her first conviction and if she's convicted on both counts I would think any sentence would be concurrent. As far as what she's charged with, i do think 15 years is fairly harsh in this case. But I also think that we have far harsher sentencing pretty much across the board here in the USA compared to many other places.

She voluntarily resigned, so I don't know what her status would be as far as if she's employable as a police officer again. I hope not.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#21

Post by filly »

As far as what she's charged with, i do think 15 years is fairly harsh in this case.
Daunte Wright's family might disagree.

But first there needs to be a guilty verdict.

Thank you for taking the time to post your knowledge and impressions. I find your insights very helpful and well written.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#22

Post by raison de arizona »

filly wrote: Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:39 pm Thank you for taking the time to post your knowledge and impressions. I find your insights very helpful and well written.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#23

Post by Kendra »

raison de arizona wrote: Wed Dec 22, 2021 6:17 pm
filly wrote: Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:39 pm Thank you for taking the time to post your knowledge and impressions. I find your insights very helpful and well written.
:yeahthat:
Me too.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#24

Post by RVInit »

:bighug: Glad to do it. So we've now had the jury spend a third day with no verdict. So maybe tomorrow. I think they will get a break until the 27th if they don't come to a verdict tomorrow. I have a feeling they will want to get it done tomorrow so they don't have it hanging over their heads over the holidays.
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Re: Daunte Wright, killing by Kimberly Potter

#25

Post by filly »

You have to admit this jury is deliberating at least. Admirable during Christmas week.
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