A former suburban Minneapolis police officer, Kim Potter, has been sentenced to two years imprisonment for manslaughter, after killing Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old motorist.
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Potter claims she had confused her handgun for her Taser when she fatally shot Daunte Wright.
Potter will serve 16 months in prison and the remaining eight months on supervised release, a penalty below state guidelines after the judge found mitigating factors warranted a lesser sentence.
For someone with no criminal history, such as Potter, the state guidelines on that charge range from slightly more than six years to about 8 1/2 years in prison, with the presumptive sentence being just over seven years.
Judge Regina Chu imposed the sentence after hearing from Wright’s family and Potter.
Wright’s mother said she will never be able to forgive Potter and would only refer to her as “the defendant” because Potter only referred to her 20-year-old son as “the driver” at trial.
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“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,” a tearful Mrs. Wright said.
Wright was killed after Brooklyn Center officers pulled him over for having expired license tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror.
The incident sparked several days of demonstrations outside the Brooklyn Center police station marked by tear gas and clashes between protesters and police.
Prosecutor Matt Frank said that he believed the presumptive sentence for Potter is appropriate, given the loss of life and her culpable negligence.
“His life mattered, and that life was taken,” Frank said. “His name is Daunte Wright. We have to say his name. He was not just a driver. He was a living human being. A life.”
“This was an unintentional crime. It was an accident. It was a mistake”, he added.
A video showed Potter shouting several times that she was going to use her Taser on Wright, but she had her gun in her hand and fired one shot into his chest.
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