The Detroit News: Kim Potter sentenced to 2 years in Daunte Wright’s death
While officer Kim Potter may have even been legally justified to shoot Daunte Wright at the time as his moving the car while struggling with officers could have amounted to a deadly threat, the facts showed she didn't intends to do so and instead under the pressure of the moment did so by mistake.
In short the jury found her, in a manner much as would happen (but with some extra politics weighing against her) if any other person shot someone by accident and they died, guilty of manslaughter.
The two year sentence the judge handed down is fair given the circumstances and guilty verdict.
Both Daunte Wright's mom and his baby momma were not too happy with it, blaming "white tears" for the reduced verdict and bemoaning that:
“My son shouldn’t have to wear a ‘rest in peace’ shirt of his dad,” Whitaker said.
Too bad that the mom didn't teach her son, and his baby momma didn't teach her baby daddy, not to resist arrest nor try to flee police.
Had they had done and had he not resisted arrest and tried to flee and possibly run over an officer, the entire event would not have occurred. The entire incident, and the tragic mistaken on Potter's part was caused by his decision to do so.
5 comments:
Is it possible that the baby momma and the felon momma were distressed because a longer prison sentence would be a springboard for more zeros in the civil suit to follow?
Yep, if he hadn't started it, she wouldn't have inadvertently ended it.
Eaton Rapids Joe: Probably not, the civil suit will be unaffected by the amount of time she got. The conviction will be more than enough to help their suit. My bet is the case gets settled by the city's insurance carrier before anyone gets to even start arguing comparative fault of his resisting arrest to her mistake in shooting a pistol rather than a taser.
Old NFO: Exactly. The majority of BLM heroes are those with criminal records who resist arrest. Perhaps instead of burning stuff down and yelling "Black Lives Matter", BLM could help reduce actual losses of Black lives by teaching criminals to stop resisting arrest.
No profit nor large mansions in doing that though.
See, I disagree. She COULD have shot him cleanly. She accidentally shot him instead of tazing him. But she COULD legally have shot him.
His death is on him. He chose to resist and (attempt to) flee. Had he not done so, he'd likely be alive right now.
I think she got screwed.
B: Yes, she could have - if she had intentionally done so then she could have done it and properly explained and justified the use of deadly force as he was acting as a deadly threat to the officers.
Unfortunately, she clearly didn’t intend to, on tape no less, and thus it could not be a justifiable use of deadly force and she was unable to justify it as it was based on a mistake. Damn shame all around.
I agree it was all precipitated by his actions and lousy choices, but she made a massive and deadly mistake and that's sadly on her.
Post a Comment