Kim Potter gets two years for killing Daunte Wright

Daunte Wright's killer, former police officer Kim Potter, gets a short sentence; Russia has already started its information war in Ukraine. 

Tonight's Sentences was written by Ellen Ioanes.

Daunte Wright’s family feels “cheated” after Kim Potter sentencing

Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images

• Former Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer Kim Potter has been sentenced to two years in custody for fatally shooting Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old unarmed Black man, during a traffic stop last year. The sentencing follows Potter’s December conviction for first- and second-degree manslaughter; Potter’s defense was that she intended to tase Wright but instead accidentally reached for her gun and fatally shot him. [Axios / Torey Van Oot and Oriana Gonzalez]
• Potter will serve 16 months in prison and eight months under supervised release due to the fact that she had no prior record. Prosecutors requested an 86-month sentence in Potter’s case, and Wright’s family expressed shock and outrage over the brief sentence. [The Hill / Lexi Lonas]
• Potter and her colleague stopped Wright for having expired tags and an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror; he also had an outstanding warrant for his arrest on weapons charges. When Potter and the other officer tried to arrest Wright, he got back in his car and attempted to drive away; Potter called out that she was going to use her Taser on him, but shot him in the chest instead, killing him. [AP / Amy Forliti, Steve Karnowski, and Tammy Webber]
• Potter killed Wright just before the murder trial of George Floyd’s killer, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, ended in a guilty verdict. Both killings set off waves of protest, sometimes violent, with the police using tear gas and flash grenades in the Minneapolis area. [New Yorker / Jelani Cobb]
• Judge Regina Chu justified a shorter sentence for Potter in part because, she said, Potter was “acting in the line of duty” and was a “respected officer.” Potter’s attorney Paul Engh demonstrated the support Potter had by showing a box of letters that she had received while in jail awaiting trial. Her attorneys also attempted to paint Wright as the aggressor in the interaction, and said she was already being punished by the fact that she could never return to the police force or own a gun again. [Washington Post / Kim Bellware]
• Daunte Wright’s parents, Katie Bryant and Arbuey Wright, said that they felt “cheated” by the judge’s decision. “It was like they were so tied up into [Potter’s] feelings and what was going on with her that they forgot about my son being killed,” Wright said. [Guardian / Richard Luscombe]
• It’s still exceedingly rare for the justice system to punish police officers for killing Black people, perhaps especially when the officer in question claims they meant to use their Taser instead of a gun. In the past 20 years, only three out of 15 such cases have resulted in convictions. [NYT / Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs]

Russian separatists order evacuations while Putin orders nuclear drills

• On Friday, Russian-backed separatists in the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk announced the emergency evacuation of hundreds of thousands of citizens from those areas in eastern Ukraine. Denis Pushilin, the separatist leader in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, claimed without evidence that Ukraine was planning an attack on the territories, which Kyiv denies. [Reuters / Anton Zverev, Pavel Polityuk, and Polina Nikolskaya]
• But metadata from the Telegram app indicates that the videos were actually created two days ago — calling into doubt the “emergency” nature of the evacuation. Instead, the evacuation seems to be part of a disinformation campaign by Russia to create a pretext to invade Ukraine. [Axios / Zachary Basu]
• Russia also announced Friday that its military would stage large-scale nuclear drills, which President Vladimir Putin himself would oversee. Saturday’s drills will include test launches of cruise missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles, Russia’s Defense Ministry said. [AP / Vladimir Isachenkov]
• Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said he would also oversee the drills, which will involve Russia’s Northern and Black Sea fleets, the air force, and units from the southern military district. While Russia holds such drills at least annually, this one is different; not only is it occurring on the brink of war, it involves the Black Sea fleet — which is based on the occupied area of Crimea. [Al Jazeera]

Lebanese Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a drone that flew into Israeli territory on a reconnaissance mission; minutes after the Hezbollah announcement, the Israeli Air Force sent fighter jets to buzz over Beirut. [AP]

• Mudslides and flooding have killed at 117 in the Brazilian city of Petropolis. [Washington Post / Reis Thebault, María Luisa Paúl, and Claire Parker]
• The Senate has passed a bill to require judges to disclose their stock trades, after an investigation found that more than 130 judges had presided over cases in which they had a financial conflict of interest. [WSJ / James V. Grimaldi]
• Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen filed two new complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying the company misled investors about efforts to combat climate and covid misinformation. [The Hill / Rebecca Klar]

What’s the three-letter abbreviation for the university Thomas Jefferson founded?

Solve today's new Vox crossword puzzle, and stay tuned for more puzzles coming out Monday through Saturday. Want more crosswords? Sign up for our crossword newsletter here and get a dedicated crossword reminder each weekend.

“We should expect defendants to have remorse; we should expect defendants to have remorse for more than what happens to them.”

[Prosecutor Matthew Frank, explaining why Kim Potter’s remorse for her killing of Daunte Wright shouldn’t grant her a more lenient sentence, at her sentencing hearing Friday]

Vox's Benji Jones talks with food journalist and author Dan Saladino, whose new book Eating to Extinction documents rare foods and food cultures from around the world, showing how they are being affected by climate change, globalization, and industrial agricultural practices. [Spotify]

Read more from Vox

Russia has 150,000 troops near Ukraine. What does that mean?

Why in the year of our lord 2022 am I still getting robocalls???

Why were scientists so slow to study Covid-19 vaccines and menstruation?

What can actually convince vaccine skeptics to get their shots

SpaceX and our space junk problem

This email was sent to you. Manage your email preferences or unsubscribe. If you value Vox’s unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring contribution.

View our Privacy Notice and our Terms of Service.

Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Floor 12, Washington, DC 20036.
Copyright © 2022. All rights reserved.