Daunte Wright Shooting Trial – VERDICT WATCH Day 1 (Update – No Verdict, Jury Returns Tuesday)
The case is with the jury now. We will monitor developments and will update if there are jury questions or other courtroom action. When a verdict is imminent, we will update the headline, and will also reach out on social media. And when the verdict is announced, we will be live.
The case is with the jury now. We will monitor developments and will update if there are jury questions or other courtroom action. When a verdict is imminent, we will update the headline, and will also reach out on social media. And when the verdict is announced, we will be live.
UPDATES (most recent at top)
7 p.m. Eastern – According to local media, deliberations have stopped for the day, and will resume Tuesday. There was no action in the courtroom regarding this.
JUST IN: December 20, 2021 – 6 p.m. CST – Jury ends deliberations for the day. No verdict tonight after 5+ hours of deliberations. Jury deliberations will resume in the AM. #KimPotterTrial#DaunteWright
— Paul Blume (@PaulBlume_FOX9) December 21, 2021
4:20 p.m Eastern – Jury Question: What was the date of the Potter interview with Dr. Miller (question dated 2:58 p.m. CT). Judge says all the evidence is in, “you should rely on your collective memory as to what the evidence is.”
Earlier Coverage
For coverage of closings, see Daunte Wright Shooting Trial LIVE – Closing Arguments Over, Jury Gets The Case (updated)
Here’s a courtroom video feed, not sure if will be any action today. Jury will deliberate until 6 p.m. Central time if needed. Jury got case at 12:45 Central. Jury is sequestered while deliberating
Reminder – there are two Counts:
COUNT I – Charge: First-Degree Manslaughter Predicated on Reckless Use/Handling of a Firearm
COUNT II – Charge: Second-Degree Manslaughter
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Comments
Based on what the law requires for conviction, Potter is not guilty. However, she should be guilty of some lesser related charge, thrown in the local jail for for 6 months, or so, and prohibited from ever again doing police work.
This woman doesn’t have the mental equipment required of a police officer, regardless of how many years she got by with it. When things got real, she lost her mind to the point that she had no idea what she was doing, and then was out of service crying hysterically, leaving others to finish the job. A police officer has to be able to keep their composure, and think and act under difficult and dangerous conditions. Potter is not police material, and probably never has been.
She’s got bigger balls than you Karen 🤣🤣
I have a good friend who is a Dallas Texas police officer. He once said to me
“virtually no one has any clue what is like to be a police officer. ” Or something to that effect.
I am not going to defend Bisley comment, especially in view of the comment from the Dallas police officers comment, though I have to agree that My observation/impression of Potter is similar to Bisley’s comment.
And just like a lot of other jobs, crappy cops use that as an excuse for why they screwed up. And so do teachers, ‘You don’t know what it’s like’ is ‘yeah I screwed up but who are YOU to question me?’.
Not saying Potter should necessarily be guilty here (from what I’ve seen of the trial, they HAVE NOT met the burden of proof), but acting like police officers should automatically get the benefit of the doubt is ridiculous.
Olinser – Again I am making no comment about her guilt, other than do say, It is obvious, at least to me, that it was a pure accident.
Responding to your comment, I think being a cop is totally different than being a teacher and the claim by teachers “that you cant know what it is like to be a teacher if you are not a teacher” is ridiculus since the complexity of being a teacher is about 2% of the complexity of being a cop.
I did find highly unusual that she never had a complaint against her in 26 years. Most cops get at least 1 or so every couple of years , even if frivolous. When you are a cop, you have to be a bad ass at least sometimes. Her reaction of near complete shock after the shooting tells me two things, one that it was truely a freak accident and two, she really wasnt well suited to being a cop ( with the caveat, of what the dallas police officer told – that no one outside law enforcement has any clue what it like to be a cop.
likewise, I find it highly unusual that she never used her taser in 10-15 years.
and that she had never previously used her taser.
The burden of proof is that police officers, like anyone else, do get the benefit of the doubt. That’s what proof beyond a reasonable doubt means.
She screwed up. That’s a fact. But what the outcome will be? Who knows at this point. I’m surprised they went this long.
Spoken like a true Monday morning quarterback.
had the perp complied, none of this would have happen
the country needs to realize that these young animals are the problem, not the cops
You’re right,of course, and shooting Wright was a public service. But, police are sometimes involved in dangerous, violent situations, and need to be capable of functioning in such circumstances — she wasn’t.
She wasn’t capable in this circumstance. That doesn’t mean she committed a crime, it means she was not up for the job, in at least one instance.
I know that juries are inclined to agree on compromise verdicts using the same rational you mentioned. That is why prosecutors try to charge as many offenses as they possibly can. Throw the spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks. But in this case, you’d have to make something up out of whole cloth to convict her of, and I don’t see that she is guilty of the crime with which she is actually charged.
Almost nobody knows, even most cops and soldiers, what it is like to kill someone. I’m not going to try and imagine it, and I won’t judge her reaction.
There’s a reason it’s standard practice to remove any cop who’s shot someone from active duty until they’ve seen someone about it. Killing someone, especially for the first time, and especially out of the blue like that, must be very traumatic, and the fact that she became nonfunctional for a time should not be held against her. Just consider it as if she was injured, because in a real sense she was.
There is no applicable lesser charge anywhere in the statutes. You can’t assume some charge will apply because you feel like one should, you have to look through the statutes and find an applicable charge. There is probably civil liability, but that’s it.
YOU have NO BUSINESS degrading this woman…UNLESS YOU WERE THERE. I do however agree SOME women are not suited for some jobs. In My mind this is just like windmills. CAN’T PULL THEIR WEIGHT.
“This woman doesn’t have the mental equipment required of a police officer, regardless of how many years she got by with it. ”
It’s only obvious in retrospect. The truth is, none of us know what we’ll do when we find ourselves in stressful situations, and because of the nature of lethal force situations, it’s impossible to know, until we’re in there.
In Potter’s case, she seemed level-headed to me — the only mistake she made, was in mixing up her pistol for her taser — and considering how rare it can be for any police officer to have to use lethal force, I’m not entirely surprised that it took 26 years for something like this to happen.
Furthermore, just because an officer was level-headed in a particular lethal-force situation, doesn’t mean they’ll be suitable for police work afterward. There may very well be other situations afterward where they prove to be panicky, and, in some cases, people who are 100% justified in using lethal force, and are level-headed with it, and apply only just the amount that is needed, end up distorted psychologically afterward, and decide they can no longer work as a police officer.
Human beings are a weird mix of rugged and fragile, both physiologically and psychologically. While it may be reasonable to examine use-of-force events to see what went wrong, and what could be done better, it should nonetheless be remembered that we can never predict how a given individual will respond to using lethal force — whether on purpose or accidental — and that’s even true of the individual themselves.
While we need to take steps to make sure our officers can do the job, it’s impossible to make sure they are robots that will never make mistakes, and will be perfectly reliable and unemotional in all situations.
The woman made a mistake. She had a solid record as a cop on the street. She probably could have benefited from more training with the tazer, and certainly the tazers themselves could have had better markings to distinguish them from handguns, but that’s not her fault. The bottom line is that she had the legal right to use lethal force on Wright, and the fact that she mistakenly used her tazer instead of her gun doesn’t change that key fact.
She made a mistake, but she is not guilty of manslaughter.
I don’t think that the markings made a difference as I believe she was focused on what the suspect was doing and not looking at her gun/taser.
The taser should be carried in a manner totally different from the handgun. Usually in a weak hand position and typically cross draw. . Markings are meaningless as at night or low light that won’t be seen.
Sad the mistake was made but that’s not changing.
She did all of these things. Unfortunately, in the stress of the moment she used the wrong hand to reach, and pulled her firearm instead of the taser.
I’d let her walk.
She didn’t need to get involved, there were already 2 police officers dealing with the situation and from what I could see she wedged herself in there for God knows what reason.
She was the Training Officer so it was clearly her job in that regard. Secondly, it is the duty of every officer to assist other officers when they need it. Both the other officers present wanted her assistance. Did you watch any of this?
She was the field training officer. Of course she was required to get involved.
First of all one of the other two officers was on the opposite side of the car and not helping in in placing the guy in handcuffs. Second if you stand back and let your fellow officers fight someone then you should not be a cop. I can tell you first hand how much we dislike cops who will not engage in a fight when we’re trying to arrest someone.
I think a question that would have been helpful to the defense when they had Potter on the stand would have been her if she ever wished to return to policing. Her answer of course would be no for several reason and this might alleviate some apprehension for the jurors to find her not guilty. I imagine they’re worried that if found not guilty she might return to police work, which the jurors would likely not want.
SHE DID’T NEED TO GET INVOLVED
Spoken by someone without any fundamental understanding of Law Enforcement. Law Enforcement is a brotherhood with a very simple premise I am my brother’s backup. If you are in a fight I am there with you.
Violate that and you will not be a Law Enforcement Officer long. It does not matter If you don’t like or despise the brother in fact if that is the case you fight harder to prove to yourself you laid it all on the line.
Assuming I am correct on the statutes and the jury instructions, there are only two questions and the first is not in dispute. First, was Potter legally justified in arresting Wright using force equivalent to a Tazer. Yes. She seems legally justified to use deadly force too … but she did not intend to do so.
Second, did Potter intend to use her firearm or was it an accident?
If it was a accident, she is not criminally liable. This does not mean she is not punished by being fired or by civil court – but not by jail time.
Deadly force was justified by statute in the circumstances regardless of whether or not she reaasonably believed deadly force was justified.
The irony here is that if she had indeed intended to act in self-defense or defense of others, then the question of justification for the use of deadly force would fall under the law of self-defense. One of the elements of a self-defense justification is that the use of deadly force was both subjectively and objectively reasonable. She claims, and the evidence pretty clearly demonstrates, that it was an accident and not self-defense or defense of others. It may seem counter-intuitive, but even though it may have been objectively reasonable to use deadly force, it was not subjectively reasonable because she wasn’t acting in deliberate self-defense. That is why, if you do have to use deadly force in self-defense, never ever say to the police that it was an accident. Self-defense requires that you be acting deliberately for that purpose. The law of accident is an excuse defense whereas self-defense is a justification defense. On the other hand, if the jury is a bunch of nitwits, none of that will probably matter either way. Frankly, I don’t have a lot of faith in the jury system, I just don’t know what would work instead.
Amen
The lesson is that when justified, put the prick down. The Taser is less reliable.
That is a very bad lesson to teach, because there are times when tasers can be effective, and ought to be used.
Having said that, if we convict Potter of manslaughter in this case, this is precisely the lesson we’ll be sending. Ten years from now, we could very well be asking ourselves “Whatever happened to tasers? Why do police only use guns? Why not use less-likely-lethal methods?”
If we’re going to expect police officers to carry both tasers and guns, then we have to accept that there are going to be rare cases where a gun is mistaken for a taser.
We also need to come to terms with the fact that tasers aren’t magic stun guns that make all force otherwise unnecessary: putting aside the fact that tasers can and have been abused, we would do well to remember that even officers can only safely use them when they have backup with a pistol pulled, ready to shoot in case the taser doesn’t work.
There was no recklessness demonstrated here.
If this were a high speed pursuit with Officer Potter chasing the suspect and the suspect jumped out of the car and Potter depressed her accelerator rather than the brake pedal, running him over and killing him as a result, that would not be reckless. It would be an accidental death.
The same standard applies here. Potter was WELL within her legal authority to tase him – and very likely within her legal authority to SHOOT him, btw. That she committed an error in the process of legally effecting arrest, does not mean she committed an act of manslaughter.
It’s interesting that you used that analogy of accidentally hitting the gas pedal instead of the brakes in explaining the distinction between recklessness and mere negligence. I have used that exact same analogy myself in a number of discussions, and it really helps. It’s definitely a lot easier to grasp with a more familiar example such as operating an automobile than unfamiliar activities such as police work.
I had a dual career as a police officer, and a paramedic in the inner city projects. I’ve also taught in several police academies. There are so many things police officers (and medics) are called upon to do these days, that hardly anyone can be good at all of it.
For example, some of us were very good at rolling around in the dirt with the bad guys, but not particularly patient or empathetic. Others were great at de-escalating conflict, handling nut jobs, or getting witnesses to talk to them. My sense is that Kim Potter was probably very good at some parts of her job that I probably would not have been as good at, but I also get the feeling that she was not a real aggressive officer , and maybe not so great with conflict, weapons, etc. I don’t really fault her for that. We need all kinds of cops.
We saw the same things with some medics. Some were exactly who you wanted to calm and comfort a frightened little old lady who was having a stroke and lost her speech, but who weren’t much good at handling a multiple victim shooting in a dimly lit alley.
The fact that Kim never had a citizen beef in 26 years tells me that she was probably not a very aggressive cop, which is not a slam on her at all. She probably wasn’t too interested in defensive tactics, firearms, or her TASER, just attending required training. Other things in her record indicate that she was probably very useful at other areas of her duties..
Having done her job, I think Kim Potter made a tragic mistake that she never planned, and would probably give her life in trade for the scumbag she shot, who in life wasn’t fit to shine her boots. If I were on her jury, it would be a cold day in hell before I voted to convict her. I believe prison should be reserved for criminals, but hell, what do I know?
I can’t help thinking that if Potter had been a big strong man rather than a meek 5’3” woman he would have helped Luckey grapple with and cuff Duante rather than reach for a weapon and that none of this would have happened. I’m sure that under some circumstances Kim’s tendency to de-escalate and avoid confrontation was a valuable trait, but not in this case.
My prediction is that whatever actually happened, the merits of the case, the evidence, or the outcome, the mainstream media will portray the verdict as “racist” and use it as a pretext to encourage riots.