Former Minnesota police officer may argue shooting Daunte Wright was ‘innocent mistake’ in upcoming trial
Kimberly Potter, the former Minnesota police officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright after mistaking her gun for a Taser, could argue the deadly interaction was a “reasonable” or “innocent mistake” during her trial next month.
Potter shot and killed Wright, a 20 year-old Black man, on April 10 during a traffic stop in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center. Police said they pulled him over for expired plates only to quickly realize there was an outstanding misdemeanor warrant out for his arrest.
When officers moved to take Wright into custody, he pulled away and managed to get back into the driver’s seat of his vehicle. Footage from Potter’s bodycam then shows the officer yelling “Taser, Taser” before she shoots Wright with her firearm.
Wright was able to drive a short distance before crashing nearby. He was pronounced dead on the scene, while his girlfriend, who was in the passenger seat at the time, was injured.
Potter was initially charged with second-degree manslaughter in connection with the incident, but prosecutors last month also opted to add a count of first-degree manslaughter. Her attorneys, Paul Engh and Earl Gray, in a notice of defenses filed Wednesday afternoon and made public on Thursday, outlined four potential strategies for her upcoming trial.
They include: “Innocent Accident,” “Innocent Mistake,” “Her perceived use of a Taser was reasonable” and “Lack of causation,” an argument that would imply Wright was partially responsible for his own death.
“What the jury will see and hear about instead is an accident,” Engh and Gray wrote in another court filing. “And a police officer’s accidental shot is not a crime.”
The defense has also requested the recent first-degree manslaughter charge, which accuses her of recklessly handled a firearm and endangered Wright’s safety when death or great bodily harm was reasonably foreseeable, be dropped.
Engh wrote that Potter’s shouting of “Taser” proves she did not believe she was reaching for her firearm. He added that Potter didn’t know she was about to create a risk of harm to Wright and couldn’t have been aware of the risk and then ignore it.
The defense emphasized that if Potter intended to use her Taser, then she did not intend to shoot Wright, which means the charge should not apply.
“The State can’t prove any offense by playing the video, which shows an accident,” Engh wrote. “The prosecution can’t win on Officer Potter’s shouts of ‘Taser, Taser, Taser,’ words meaning she was going to use her TASER, so as to not harm Mr. Wright. Nor for reasons of her enormous after-the-fact regret of what could not have been a conscious act.”
Prosecutors have argued that there is evidence to prove the elements of both charges at trial, where the case will be decided by a jury. They noted that the state is not accusing Potter of intentionally killing Wright, but that she “consciously and intentionally acted in choosing to use force ... in reaching for, drawing, pointing, and manipulating a weapon.”
Wright’s death sparked a series of protests that raged on for days across several cities in Minnesota, including Brooklyn Center.
Potter’s trial is scheduled to start Nov. 30.
With News Wire Services
