"She Made the World a Better Place:" Judge Regina Chu Lies, Insults Daunte Wright Before Giving Kim Potter a Slap on the Wrist

     Kim Potter was found guilty of manslaughter. That is no longer up for debate. As the world watched the trial of Derek Chauvin, who would be found guilty of murder and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison, just blocks away, another black man lost his life at the hands of police. Daunte Wright was shot in the chest in the driver's seat of his car, killing him and sending the now-driverless car down the street, where it crashed into another car, giving the passenger in Daunte's car a broken jaw and numerous other injuries and injuring a person seated in the other car, leading them to hospice, where, 10 months later, they are likely to be killed as a result of these actions.

     Potter's attorneys have given a number of reasons they believe their client should have been given probation. She is a middle-aged woman with no prior criminal history, they say, a devout religious woman and likely not a danger to the community in the future. All of these things may be true, but the fact is that she killed a young black man and was found guilty of manslaughter, and the penalty for manslaughter is up to 15 years in prison, not probation. One argument that her attorney made that was particularly annoying was that sending her to prison would send the message that officers who abused their authority would be sent to prison. Yes! That's the whole point! Another was that she was not responsible for injuries related to the crash because Daunte Wright began driving off: had he not been killed, he would have been in control of his vehicle. The blame for that falls squarely on Kim Potter's shoulders.

     Potter recklessly killed a black man, and now, sentencing guidelines say she should be given 72 to 102 months (six to 8.5 years) in prison. However, far outweighing the mitigating factors listed above are a number of aggravating circumstances: aside from taking a man's life, she killed another person and injured yet another. She placed her fellow officers and members of the community in a great deal of danger when she killed the driver of a moving vehicle. She abused her position of authority as a police officer with her actions. Considering all of these factors, it is only appropriate that she be sentenced to 10+ years in prison, the state, led by the brilliant Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, said. 

     Ultimately, the decision fell to Hennepin County Judge Regina Chu. Kim Potter fake cried like she did on the stand. You could tell when Chu asked her to face a different direction: the tears stopped immediately. Her attorneys gave a long, rambling argument, and Potter spent most of her time proselytizing to Wright's family and talking about how great her fellow cops were. Her attorneys talked about her mental health and implied that she was being thrown under the bus because she was a cop, brought up her aging mother, and whined about prison conditions. Judge Chu bought the letters sent to her by white supremacists across the country who barely knew Kim Potter and claimed that she acted lawfully when she had been convicted of manslaughter. She proceeded to claim nobody else was injured when, as I mentioned, two people were seriously injured. She claimed Potter was not reckless because she only fired one shot: apparently, according to Judge Chu, a vehicle is not a deadly weapon. Apparently, to Judge Chu, killing someone barely out of high school with a child and injuring two other people is okay as long as you're a cop. She even claimed Kim Potter "clearly" showed remorse. She smiled in her mugshot and, immediately after killing Daunte Wright, cried for herself because she was going to prison. Judge Regina Chu even had the gall to say Kim Potter made the world a better place. Chu then sentenced Kim Potter to 16 months in prison with credit for two months served: she'll be eligible for release in October. After that, she'll have to serve a whopping eight months of probation. In spite of her claims that she'll never get over this, she'll be out of the system after being in it for less than three years. This is the same Regina Chu who let a violent criminal out on bond only for him to disappear. Chu is a racist and either a crook or a sucker. It's time for the people of Hennepin County to vote her out of office.

     The fight for accountability in Hennepin County alone is far from over. Officers Tou Thao, Thomas Lane, and J. Alexander Kueng are still on trial in federal court and face state trial in June. Derek Chauvin still faces sentencing after pleading guilty in federal court to killing George Floyd and beating and suffocating a 14-year-old boy. Meanwhile, we still have to pursue justice for Amir Locke, a black man fatally shot by police during a no-knock warrant in January.