Jury deliberating Kimberly Potter's fate in shooting death of Daunte Wright

After 11 days of testimony and 33 witnesses, a Hennepin County jury began closed-door deliberations Monday on whether to convict former Brooklyn Center police officer Kimberly Potter of manslaughter for firing her handgun instead of her Taser and killing 20-year-old Daunte Wright last April.

After a morning of closing arguments, the jury received the case early Monday afternoon and stopped deliberating at 6 p.m. They are expected to resume discussions Tuesday morning.

As previously ordered by Hennepin County District Judge Regina Chu, the jurors will remain sequestered throughout deliberations.

During the closing arguments, no one disputed Potter made a mistake, but prosecutor Matthew Frank said that's not a legitimate defense. Both he and prosecutor Erin Eldridge repeatedly cited Potter's years of training as a 26-year veteran who should have known better than to grab her gun from her right hip when she meant to grab the Taser from her left.

"This was no little oopsie," Eldridge said. "This was a colossal screwup, a blunder of epic proportions. It was precisely the thing she had been warned about for years, and she was trained to prevent it. It was irreversible and fatal."

In response, defense lawyer Earl Gray asked how Potter could be found to "recklessly, consciously handle a gun" when she thought she was holding a Taser. "It's totally believable, totally true she didn't know she had her gun," he said. "She'd never shot her gun in 26 years."

Chu read the jury pages of instructions on how to weigh credibility of testimony, evidence and the elements of the crimes of first- and second-degree manslaughter.

Frank provided the rebuttal argument, the final word, after Eldridge gave the state's initial closings and Gray spoke for Potter. If the jury convicts the 49-year-old Potter of either charge, she faces a sentence of several years.

Gray argued that Potter, who testified tearfully in her own defense Friday, made a mistake in firing her gun instead of her Taser but also that she was justified in using deadly force because Wright had a warrant for illegal possession of a firearm and was trying to flee at the risk of dragging her sergeant.

The shooting in Brooklyn Center occurred on a Sunday when the world's attention had been trained for a month on the ongoing murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd. Wright's shooting led to days of violent unrest in the northwestern suburb. And now Potter has faced a jury in the same 18th-floor courtroom in downtown Minneapolis in which Chauvin was convicted, handcuffed and taken to prison.

Gray alluded to Chauvin in his closing, saying that when Wright slipped out of the control of officer Anthony Luckey, whom Potter was training, Luckey "could have thrown Wright to the ground or put a knee on his neck."

Instead, Wright was able to get back behind the wheel of his white Dodge and became his own "superseding cause of death," Gray said.

The defense attorney was dismissive of the prosecution's use-of-force expert Seth Stoughton, a law professor from the University of South Carolina, who testified that the officers should have let Wright leave and arrest him later.

"That's not protecting the public," Gray said. "That's not serving the public. They had to stop him."

Eldridge, however, said Wright was not armed and posed no threat to the officers.

"Accidents can still be crimes if they occur as a result of recklessness or culpable negligence," Eldridge said, adding that Potter's failure to recognize that she was holding her gun instead of her Taser "establishes her recklessness."

Eldridge clicked through footage of the shooting from the vantage of Potter's own body camera frame by frame, citing her missteps along the way, shifting an expired insurance card from her right hand to her left.

Also, she noted that Potter's camera didn't capture the look of fear the former officer claimed to have seen on the face of her colleague, Sgt. Mychal Johnson, who was reaching in from the passenger side of the vehicle to try to control Wright.

After the shooting, Johnson was heard on video footage telling an inconsolable Potter that she had to shoot because he could have been dragged away if Wright had been allowed to flee. Eldridge and Frank claimed Johnson "fed" that claim to Potter but that she didn't "bite" when she was distraught in the minutes immediately after Wright's death.

"If anyone saved Sgt. Johnson's life, it was Daunte Wright when he took a bullet to the chest," Eldridge said.

She argued that Potter wasn't justified in using force and told jurors to look at Luckey and Sgt. Johnson, neither of whom drew their weapons because both were "using a proportional amount of force. They were just trying to keep him from driving away."

Both she and Frank reminded the jurors they would have both the disabled Taser and Glock handgun in the jury room so they could hold them and get a feel for the differences.

She cautioned jurors about accepting the testimony of Potter's former colleagues because they were fellow members of the "police family." A more important relationship, the prosecutor argued, is the one between a police officer and their community they serve.

"The defendant shattered that trust, [and] she shattered Daunte Wright's heart," Eldridge said. "She chose right instead of left, she chose wrong instead of right. She chose her gun, and she shot and killed Daunte Wright."

In his closing, Gray worked to put Potter's mistake in the context of a career and life as a good officer, colleague and friend.

"Nobody's perfect, ladies and gentlemen. This lady made a mistake, and my gosh, a mistake is not a crime," he said.

He also drove home Wright's role in creating what Gray repeatedly called "chaos" as he resisted arrest. He told jurors to play footage of the incident in real time — not the slow motion that Eldridge used.

"He really wanted to get away," Gray said. "He knew he was guilty of the weapons violation. He didn't want to go to jail and run the risk of a criminal case."

As to the look of fear in Johnson's face that Potter claims to have seen but didn't appear on body camera footage, Gray patted his midsection.

"The body-worn camera is here," he said, and "her head is here," he continued, raising one hand.

Gray also stood up for the reputations of the officers who testified, for the state as well as the prosecution, and backed all of Potter's actions at the shooting scene.

"Are they the kind of individuals who would lie, give a false opinion? No," he said.

Gray reminded the jury that they must presume Potter innocent, and to find her guilty they must determine that the state proved "each and every element of the charges beyond a reasonable doubt." He said the state failed "miserably."

In his rebuttal, Frank countered the claim that Wright's behavior led to his death.

"I want you to consider if we accept that argument, that he caused his own death, we have to accept that any time a person does not meticulously follow the demands of a police officer they can be shot to death and there would be no consequences to that officer," he said. "That's absurd."

Six women and six men serve on the jury. Nine of the jurors are white, two are Asian women and one is a Black woman. Potter is white, Wright was Black.

Four jurors are in their 40s, three are in their 20s, two are in their 60s, two are in their 50s and one is in her 30s.