February 19, 2022, 9:54 am*
Kim Potter shot and killed a young Black man named Daunte Wright after halting his vehicle for a traffic stop. Potter’s defense has been that she intended to reach for her taser, though that weapon was habitually attached to the other side of her body. She was convicted in December and then sentenced on Friday to 16 months in prison with a potential eight additional months which she could avoid with good behavior.
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The sentence has horrified Wright’s family, who believe Potter was given a lenient sentence in part because she is a white woman and that she was even coached to express remorse appropriately in court. Her prison intake featured a wide smile, which Wright’s mother Katie Bryant says indicates she is not sorry at all. Her lawyer has insisted Potter was instructed to make that expression.
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Bryant said Potter never acknowledged her family in the hall and only cried after a break in the trial and “had time to be coached on how to gain some sort of sympathy from the jury.”
She added, “How do you show remorse when you’re smiling in your mug shot after being sentenced to manslaughter? After taking my son’s life? How do you say you’re sorry with no tears?”
Bryant added that the justice system “murdered him all over again” with the leniency of Potter’s sentence.
“This is the problem with our justice system today,” said Bryant. “White women tears trump justice.”
She continued, “To sit there and pouring my heart out in my victim impact statement that took so long to write, and I rewrote it over and over again, to not get a response out of the judge but then when it came down to sentencing Kim Potter, she broke out in tears.”
Wright’s father, Arbuey Wright called the sentence a “slap on the wrist” and that conviction gave them false hope.
“It gave us a little sense of hope, like, you know, things were gonna get a little bit better, but now, I walked out of this courthouse feeling like people are laughing at us because this lady got a slap on the wrist,” he said. “And we’re still, every night, sitting around crying, waiting for my son to come home.”
*First Published: February 19, 2022, 9:37 am
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