“Kim Potter, the former Minnesota police officer who mistakenly drew a gun instead of a Taser and fatally shot Daunte Wright during a traffic stop, was sentenced on Friday to two years in prison,” and she’ll have to serve 16 months behind bars, then 8 months of supervised release, CNN reported on Friday, February 18, 2022 (story here).
Wright’s family is deeply disappointed by the sentence, which they obviously feel is far too light. His father said, “I feel cheated, I feel hurt.” Under Minnesota law, Potter could’ve gotten up to 15 years.
His death and Potter’s trial have received a lot of news coverage, and readers may be familiar with the story, so I’ll be brief. Wright was pulled over for signaling a right turn while in a left turn lane, driving with expired tags (the car belonged to his brother), and having an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror.
After being pulled over, Wright produced neither a driver’s license nor proof of insurance. The officer with Potter, a trainee, ran Wright’s name and discovered he had an outstanding warrant for armed robbery, failure to appear in court, fleeing an officer, and misdemeanor gun possession. He fought the officers when they tried to arrest him, and when he attempted to drive off, Potter — intending to use her taser — grabbed her gun instead and killed him with a single shot.
There’s no reason to believe she meant to kill him; this was an accident, and it occurred in the heat of a struggle instigated by Wright.
But human life is valuable — so valuable, in fact, that our society penalizes the reckless or negligent taking of a life. That’s the rap against Potter. The question is, what is an appropriate penalty for her moment of carelessness?
Every year, thousands of innocent Americans are killed by drunk drivers. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) has compiled a state-by-state list of potential penalties for DUI-caused vehicular homicides here. In many states, DUI killers could get no time at all, although that seems unlikely in practice. But it’s hard to pin down how much time DUI killers get behind bars, because there’s probably no typical sentence, nor any centralized database. This California lawyer says (here) a typical sentence for DUI manslaughter in that state is 16 months behind bars — exactly what Potter got.
Potter is white, and Wright was black, a fact that contributed greatly to the public interest in the case, and certainly served to inflame passions. But if there was no racial motive behind either the traffic stop or the officers’ subsequent actions, this shouldn’t influence either the determination of Potter’s guilt or innocence, or her punishment.
Wright wasn’t an innocent victim of police brutality. He was a wanted criminal trying to evade arrest. That shouldn’t — and didn’t — excuse his illegal killing. But his actions contributed to his death; he would still be alive if he hadn’t tried to flee. That’s relevant.
In tort law, which applies to car accidents, there’s a legal theory called “comparative negligence.” It works like this: If an accident causes $10,000 of damage to Driver A’s car, and Driver B is 80% at fault and Driver A is 20% at fault, then Driver A get $8,000 from Driver B and eats the other $2,000 (which is attributed to his contributing fault in causing the accident).
This doesn’t apply to crimes or criminal sentencing. There’s no such thing in criminal law as comparative fault between perpetrator and victim, nor should there be. But the tort principle illustrates a broader principle of common sense: If you’re resisting arrest, and fighting the cops, and get killed by accident, the cop who killed you is less at fault than if she did it intentionally, or accidentally killed you when you weren’t resisting or trying to flee.
Two notorious cases bear mentioning here.
In 2015, Robert Bates, a 73-year-old insurance executive and volunteer sheriff’s reserve deputy accidentally killed a black man fleeing from police by grabbing his gun instead of his taser (details here). Bates served a little over 17 months in prison.
In 2016, Jeronimo Yanez, an experienced Hispanic police officer, intentionally shot and killed Philando Castile, a black man who did nothing wrong, and was pulled over because the cops thought Castile and his girlfriend “look[ed] like” someone involved in a robbery. Yanez was acquitted by a jury and got no jail time; the only consequence for him was losing his police job.
Potter, as a convicted felon, will never be a police officer again. Neither will Robert Bates. Both served (or will serve) more than a year behind bars, followed by a period of supervised release, for taking a human life under conditions of less than legal justification.
This world in general doesn’t value human life enough. After World War 2, many Nazis responsible for civilian deaths, and even atrocities, got off lightly or with no punishment at all. During the Vietnam War, wanton infliction of violence on civilians usually went unpunished, and even the notorious My Lai massacre resulted in almost no punishment for the perpetrators. Our society simply doesn’t value the lives of foreigners very much.
You can make a strong argument that we don’t value the lives of our own fellow citizens enough when they’re victims of crime, irresponsible behavior (e.g., drunk driving), or police brutality. The life sentences given to the vigilante murderers of black jogger Ahmaud Arbery are an outlier; the 22½ year sentence given to Derek Chauvin, the cop who deliberately murdered George Floyd, is very much an outlier. This is definitely not Old Testament justice (“an eye for an eye, a life for a life”).
On that basis, Potter’s sentence is too light. But it’s firmly in the ballpark of what our society typically dishes out for similar crimes, and there’s no logical or moral basis for singling her out for exceptionally harsh treatment. (But some attorneys blasted the sentence; see story here.)
What’s needed is a broad societal change, similar to the tougher treatment of drunk drivers in recent years following public outcry, that puts greater value on human lives. On the civil side of the law, this is already been seen in the settlements paid to victims’ families; George Floyd’s family was paid $27 million, Breonna Taylor’s family got $12 million, and Philando Castile’s family received $3.8 million; civil litigation is still pending in Wright’s case. But money can’t replace lives, and criminal law and sentencing remains the most important form of accountability — and deterrent — to the taking of lives that, in our collective judgment, shouldn’t be taken.