Kim Potter, a former Minnesota police officer convicted of manslaughter for shooting and killing a 20-year-old Black man, was sentenced on Friday to two years, far less than the seven-year sentence that prosecutors were seeking.
Potter will be sentenced to 16 months in prison and another eight months on supervised release. She will be fined $1,000.
The state's guidelines for a presumptive sentence of 86 months or seven years for first-degree manslaughter are much shorter.
The complexity of the case was emphasized by the judge, who contrasted it with other high-profile police killings.
She said that the cop who used his knee to pin down the person was not guilty of murder.
In her 20 years on the bench, Chu acknowledged that there will be people who disagree with the shorter sentence.
That I granted a significant downward departure does not diminish the life of Daunte Wright. She said that his life mattered.
Potter did not react when her sentence was handed down, but there were murmurs in the back of the courtroom.
Potter apologized to the Wright family as she did during the trial.
She said she was so sorry that she brought the death of your son, father, brother, uncle, grandson, nephew and the rest of your family.
The family of Wright asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence.
His mom said she wouldn't give her the respect of calling her by her name.
She referred to him as the driver, as if killing him wasn't enough to dehumanize him. She never mentioned his name. I will never be able to forgive you for that. I will never be able to forgive you for what you have done to us.
Potter worked for the Brooklyn Center Police Department for 26 years.
Arbuey Wright said that his son's police officer mother, Kim Potter, was trained to prevent this type of thing from happening.
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