No wonder Kim Potter was smiling so bright in her mugshot. She had just gotten away with it (almost), but she had gotten the next best thing for her and she knew it. She got a conviction she knew would probably result in a slap on the wrist sentence and she was right. Today Judge Regina Chu sentenced Potter to just 24 months in state prison for First Degree Manslaughter. Potter gained national notoriety last year after being caught on her own body camera shooting Daunte Wright while yelling "taser taser taser." She later claimed to have mistaken her gun for her taser before accidentally killing Wright. Prosecutors sided with her early on and decided not to pursue more serious charges against her. An ordinary person would have been charged with murder and forced to prove themselves innocent in court, but police officers are almost always held to a different standard. That standard once again shows that there is more than one criminal injustice system in America, one for the police and another for the rest of us.
As an ex-con, this author has seen far too many people get far more time for not hurting anyone than this woman received for actually killing somebody. I myself was sentence to 24 months in federal prison for sending someone a death threat via email. It was my first felony conviction. That entire time I would see people convicted of more serious things get lighter sentences and it made my blood boil. I saw sex offenders get probation because it was their first time getting caught and in some cases violent offenders getting less time because they were mentally ill. On the other end I saw countless non-violent offenders sentenced to decades behind bars for property crimes like bank robbery and victimless crimes like drug conspiracies. The whole time I was sitting there thinking I didn't molest or physically harm anybody so getting me time served shouldn't be a problem, but they threw the book at me and I got 24 months. Fast forward to today when somebody who actually killed somebody received the same sentence I received just for threatening to kill someone. I never thought I would see the day when I could say that people have gotten the same amount of time for actually killing people as I received just for threatening to do so.
You watch Judge Chu's impose the sentence in the video below.