The former police officer who said she confused her handgun for her Taser and fatally shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday.
The 26-year-old suburban Minneapolis police veteran was convicted of first- and second-degree manslaughter in December for the killing of Wright, a 20-year-old Black motorist.
‘This is one of the saddest cases I’ve had on my 20 years on the bench,’ Judge Regina Chu said on Friday. ‘This is a cop who made a tragic mistake.’
Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, asked the judge to hold Potter to ‘the highest accountability’ and said she would never be able to forgive Potter. His mother added that she would only refer to Potter as ‘the defendant’ because Potter only referred to her slain son as ‘the driver’ during the trial.
‘She never once said his name. And for that I’ll never be able to forgive you. And I’ll never be able to forgive you for what you’ve stolen from us,’ Wright said through tears.
‘A police officer who was supposed to serve and protect so much took so much away from us … My life and my world will never ever be the same again,’ she added.
Wright family attorney Ben Crump said the lighter sentencing was unsound, and called the legal system ‘Black and white.’
The judge, however, stood by her decision, noting that this case was not the same as other high-profile killings by police.
‘This is not a cop found guilty of murder for using his knee to pin down a person for 9 1/2 minutes as he gasped for air. This is not a cop found guilty of manslaughter for intentionally drawing his firearm and shooting across his partner and killing an unarmed woman who approached his squad,’ Chu said.
‘This is a cop who made a tragic mistake.’
Since Potter has no criminal history, the state guidelines on first-degree manslaughter range from slightly more than six years to about 8 1/2 years in prison. Prosecutors agreed with the standard sentence, but defense attorneys requested a sentence below the guidelines, including a sentence of probation only.
The defense told the judge that while Wright’s death was ‘beyond tragic for everyone involved,’ that it was ‘an unintentional crime,’ and shouldn’t be punished as harshly.
Wright was killed when Brooklyn Center officers pulled him over for having expired license tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. His killing came as Derek Chauvin, the police officer who killed George Floyd, was on trial, and sparked several days of demonstrations outside the Brooklyn Center police station.
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