Jury Weighs Charges in Trial Over Daunte Wright’s Death

Mr. Wright had called his mother when he was pulled over, and she testified last week that he sounded nervous on the phone. The police had stopped his car because it had an expired registration sticker and an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, both of which are violations.

Body camera videos of the shooting showed Ms. Potter, 49, shouting that she was going to stun Mr. Wright with her Taser and yelling “Taser! Taser! Taser!” immediately before firing a single bullet into Mr. Wright’s chest from her service gun. In the videos, a distraught Ms. Potter is seen telling fellow officers that she “grabbed the wrong gun,” using an expletive, and then collapsing to the ground, sobbing.

Two days after the shooting, Ms. Potter resigned from the police force. Testifying last week before the jurors who will decide her fate, Ms. Potter said she was “so sorry” for what had happened, and sobbed intensely on the witness stand. “I didn’t want to hurt anybody,” she added.

Prosecutors do not dispute that the shooting was an accident, but they contend that Ms. Potter acted so recklessly and dangerously that she should be imprisoned. They have charged her with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter, either of which would most likely mean several years in prison if she is convicted.

Mr. Wright died on April 11 during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb, when a police officer, Kimberly Potter, fired a single shot from her handgun, apparently mistaking it for her Taser.

Mr. Wright had been working at a Taco Bell and at a Famous Footwear shoe store shortly before he died, and was considering a career in carpentry, his mother testified in court. She said he had enrolled in the Summit Academy, a vocational school, about two months before he was killed. He had six siblings and was living at his parents’ home with his two younger sisters.

A little over a month after his death, a lawsuit against Mr. Wright’s family raised questions about whether Mr. Wright was involved in a violent dispute in May 2019.

The woman who filed the lawsuit claimed that Mr. Wright had shot her son — a former friend of Mr. Wright’s — in the head in Minneapolis, leaving the man severely disabled, possibly because the man had “beat up” Mr. Wright earlier that month. The lawsuit offers no direct evidence tying Mr. Wright to the shooting, which remains unsolved.

Katie Wright has called the claims in the lawsuit hurtful. “To run with allegations like that is pretty bad, whether they are true or not true,” she told The Star Tribune.

The judge overseeing the trial of Ms. Potter ruled that any “bad acts” committed by Mr. Wright could only be brought up during the trial if it was shown that Ms. Potter knew about the conduct at the time of the traffic stop, so the allegations in the lawsuit were not raised.

People who knew Mr. Wright have acknowledged that he made mistakes, but they said he was trying to improve his life for the sake of his son.

A friend, Emajay Driver, said that Mr. Wright had “loved to make people laugh.” As a freshman in high school, Mr. Wright had been voted a class clown. “There was never a dull moment,” Mr. Driver said.

Delivering a eulogy at Mr. Wright’s funeral, the Rev. Al Sharpton said he was told that Minneapolis had not seen a funeral procession so large since Prince, the musician who was born and raised in Minneapolis, died in 2016.

“You thought he was just some kid with an air freshener,” Mr. Sharpton said, referring to a reason the police cited for pulling him over, an air freshener hanging from his rearview mirror. Mr. Sharpton added: “He was a prince, and all of Minneapolis has stopped today to honor the prince of Brooklyn Center.”

The jurors will be sequestered until they reach a verdict, likely staying in a hotel, and will not be allowed to go home at night during deliberations (as erroneously stated earlier).

Yet more than a year and a half after Mr. Floyd was murdered, with another police brutality trial underway in Minnesota — for the killing earlier this year of Daunte Wright — criminal charges against police officers, much less convictions, remain exceedingly rare.

According to data kept by a research team led by Philip M. Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University, 21 officers have been charged this year with murder or manslaughter in connection with an on-duty shooting.

While that figure is an increase from 2020, when 16 officers were charged, and is the highest annual total since Mr. Stinson began tracking the data in 2005, it remains small next to the roughly 1,100 people a year who are killed by the police in America.

“It seems to be business as usual,” Mr. Stinson said. “It’s very, very difficult to make systemic change.”

Despite the protests of 2020 and the sustained public attention on police violence, the overall number of killings has barely budged. So far this year, 960 people have been killed by the police, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit group that keeps track of police killings. That figure is roughly in line with data the group began collecting in 2013.

The second-degree manslaughter charge requires jurors to find that Ms. Potter caused Mr. Wright’s death through culpable negligence, meaning that she created an unreasonable risk and consciously took a chance of causing death or great bodily harm. The standard sentence for a conviction on that charge is about four years in prison, though the maximum penalty is 10 years.

Prosecutors and Ms. Potter’s lawyers agree that the shooting was a mistake and that Ms. Potter meant to stun Mr. Wright with her Taser, not shoot him. But they disagree on how culpable she was in making that mistake.

Ms. Potter, 49, was a police officer with the Brooklyn Center Police Department in the suburbs of Minneapolis for 26 years, until she resigned two days after shooting Mr. Wright. She became a leader in the police union, and she was often assigned to give field training to new officers.

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In questioning witnesses, prosecutors have suggested that Ms. Potter was not justified in firing a Taser — let alone her gun — at Mr. Wright because he was in the driver’s seat of a car. Brooklyn Center Police Department policy advises against using a Taser on someone who is operating a car. Ms. Potter’s lawyers have argued that Mr. Wright was not operating the car when the shooting took place during a traffic stop, though they also argued that he posed a risk because he was attempting to drive away.

In video of the shooting, a distraught Ms. Potter swears after pulling the trigger on her handgun, and she tells her fellow officers that she grabbed the wrong weapon. Moments later, the video shows, she collapses to the ground, where she sobs and says she is going to go to prison.

“She realizes what has happened, much to her everlasting and unending regret,” Mr. Engh said at the beginning of the trial. “She made a mistake. This was an accident. She’s a human being.”

Ms. Potter’s lawyers argued that she had been justified in trying to stun Mr. Wright and in shooting him, because another officer, Sgt. Mychal Johnson, was leaning into the passenger-side window of Mr. Wright’s car. If Ms. Potter had done nothing, her lawyers asserted, Sergeant Johnson could have been dragged by the car and died.

Ms. Potter’s husband, Jeff, was a police officer in a different Minneapolis suburb until he retired in 2017. They have two adult children.

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The prosecutor adds that the defense’s argument that Daunte Wright caused his own death is “somewhat stunning to me,” and says that Kimberly Potter’s lawyers are making “factually wrong and legally wrong” arguments.

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Lawyer for Kimberly Potter: Daunte Wright ‘Caused His Own Death’

The lead defense lawyer urged jurors to acquit Kimberley Potter on both of the manslaughter charges she faces for the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright, arguing that “a mistake is not a crime.”

Did they prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she caused this death? No. Daunte Wright caused his own death, unfortunately. Those are the cold, hard facts of the evidence. There’s two absolute reasons why she’s not guilty. Absolute. She didn’t cause this, and she had a right to use deadly force. How can you recklessly, consciously handle a gun if you don’t know you have it? If, because of the exigent circumstances, the emergency, whatever it was, the mistake, it’s totally believable, totally true that she didn’t know she had her gun. Nobody’s perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. And some of those mistakes are small mistakes, but some of them are very serious. And this lady here made a mistake. And my gosh, a mistake is not a crime.

“This lady here made a mistake, and my gosh, a mistake is not a crime,” Mr. Gray said, motioning toward his client. “It just isn’t.”

His closing argument highlighted the central issue in the case: whether Ms. Potter will be sent to prison for a shooting that both sides concede was a mistake. His comments came after Erin Eldridge, a prosecutor, said in her closing argument that “accidents can still be crimes.”

Mr. Gray, who is regarded as one of the best defense lawyers in Minnesota, said that Mr. Wright, a 20-year-old Black man who was driving to a carwash, was at fault because he had broken free from police officers trying to arrest him on a bench warrant.

“Daunte Wright caused his own death, unfortunately,” Mr. Gray said. “Those are the cold hard facts of the evidence.”

Ms. Potter, who is white and was on the police force in Brooklyn Center for 26 years before resigning soon after the shooting, would probably be sentenced to several years, and possibly more than a decade, in prison if she is convicted.

Mr. Gray said his three main arguments were that it was Mr. Wright’s actions that had caused his death; that Ms. Potter had been justified in shooting Mr. Wright; and that the statutes under which Ms. Potter is charged require that she had to have consciously taken certain acts. The first-degree manslaughter charge, Mr. Gray noted, requires that jurors find Ms. Potter committed a conscious or intentional act in connection with the handling of or use of a firearm.

“How can you recklessly — consciously — handle a gun if you don’t know you have it?” Mr. Gray said.

He noted that several police officers had testified that Ms. Potter was justified in shooting Mr. Wright —  intentionally or not — because another officer was leaning into Mr. Wright’s car and could have been dragged and killed if Mr. Wright had driven away.

Mr. Gray also urged the jurors to watch the body camera videos of the shooting at full speed, rather than in slow motion, in order to see the “chaos” of the scene.

He urged jurors to keep in mind that prosecutors must prove their case beyond reasonable doubt, a standard that he said would lead jurors, 10 years from now, to look in the mirror and say, “By golly, I did the right thing when I found Kim Potter not guilty of both counts.”

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“Daunte Wright caused his own death, unfortunately,” Gray says. “Those are the cold hard facts of the evidence.”

The Prosecution

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• Matthew Frank, an assistant attorney general for Minnesota, is leading the prosecution. He prosecutes criminal cases for the office, which is run by Attorney General Keith Ellison. The attorney general’s office took on the case in May at the request of the Hennepin County district attorney.

• Erin Eldridge, an assistant attorney general, works in the office’s criminal division. Like Mr. Frank, she was involved in the prosecution of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted in April of murdering George Floyd.

The Defense

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• Representing Ms. Potter are Earl Gray, Paul Engh and Amanda Montgomery. Mr. Gray and Mr. Engh are part of the legal defense fund of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, a group that represents thousands of law enforcement officers in the state, and Ms. Montgomery works at Mr. Gray’s law firm.

• Mr. Gray also is the lawyer for Thomas Lane, one of the three other officers charged in Mr. Floyd’s death. Mr. Lane is scheduled to go on trial with the other officers in March on charges that he aided and abetted second-degree murder and aided and abetted second-degree manslaughter in Mr. Floyd’s death.

The Judge

• Judge Regina Chu has been a judge in Hennepin County for nearly two decades after being appointed in 2002 by Jesse Ventura, Minnesota’s governor at the time. She had previously worked in a private law practice and, in the 1980s, for the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office.

• Judge Chu earned her law degree from William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., which is now known as the Mitchell Hamline School of Law. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota.

The Jury

• The jury is made up of 12 primary jurors, as well as two alternates. Their identities will not be publicly disclosed until after the trial.

• Among the 12 primary jurors, six are men and six are women, and they range in age from their 20s to their 60s. Nine of the 12 jurors are white, two are Asian and one is Black. Hennepin County, from where the jurors were drawn, is roughly 68 percent white, 14 percent Black, 8 percent Asian and 7 percent Latino.

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Prosecutor in Kimberly Potter Trial: ‘This Was a Colossal Screw-Up’

The prosecutor emphasized in her closing arguments that Kimberly Potter, a former police officer, was criminally reckless when she fatally shot Daunte Wright.

This case is about the defendant’s rash and reckless conduct. It’s not about her being a nice person or a good person. Even nice people have to obey the law. Carrying a badge and a gun is not a license to kill. You don’t get to shoot someone when things don’t go according to plan. An ordinary and prudent person would not have drawn a weapon, held it for more than five to six seconds, aimed it and pulled the trigger, all without recognizing or confirming what was in their hand. Members of the jury, this was no little oopsie. This was not putting the wrong, wrong date on a check. This was not entering the wrong password somewhere. This was a colossal screw-up, 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 it was fatal. Now, the defense may refer to this as an unfortunate mistake or a tragic accident, or that because the defendant didn’t know or didn’t realize that she had a gun in her hand, that this is somehow an accident and not a crime. That is simply not the case. It’s just plain wrong. Accidents can still be crimes if they occur as the result of recklessness or culpable negligence.

Ms. Eldridge said in the prosecution’s closing argument that Ms. Potter, a white former police officer in Brooklyn Center, a Minneapolis suburb, had mishandled her gun when she shot and killed Mr. Wright, a Black 20-year-old driving to a carwash, as he struggled with another officer in the driver’s seat of his car.

“Carrying a badge and a gun is not a license to kill,” Ms. Eldridge said. “You don’t get to shoot someone when things don’t go according to plan.”

Ms. Eldridge noted that Ms. Potter had fired her gun as Mr. Wright’s passenger sat next to him and as two other officers were reaching into the car, which she said had put “four people directly in harm’s way” and had created an additional hazard when Mr. Wright’s car lurched forward after he was shot, crashing into an oncoming car.

As Ms. Eldridge began her closing argument, prosecutors showed a photograph of Mr. Wright with his father and another of him with his son, Daunte Jr., on the son’s first birthday in July 2020.

Ms. Potter’s lawyers are expected to deliver their own closing argument on Monday, after which prosecutors will give a brief rebuttal and the jury will begin deliberating the two charges, first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. A conviction on either count would probably bring a sentence of several years, and possibly more than a decade, in prison.

In her closing argument, Ms. Eldridge emphasized that prosecutors had not charged Ms. Potter with murder, and that they did not believe that Ms. Potter meant to kill Mr. Wright, but rather that she was criminally reckless.

“This was no little oopsie,” Ms. Eldridge said. “This was not putting the wrong date on a check. This was not entering the wrong password somewhere. This was a colossal screw-up, a blunder of epic proportions.”

The prosecutors’ case suffered at times during the trial when several police officers, including some called to the witness stand by the prosecution, gave testimony that was favorable to Ms. Potter, including saying that she had been justified in firing her gun. In her closing argument, Ms. Eldridge urged jurors to consider that many of those witnesses were close to Ms. Potter.

“When trouble comes, it’s family that supports you unconditionally,” Ms. Eldridge said. “Sticking by each other, for better or for worse, is what makes family, family.”

In an apparent allusion to Ms. Potter’s testimony, when she broke down and sobbed repeatedly, Ms. Eldridge called on the jury to set aside any sympathy they may have for Ms. Potter. “This case is also not about whether the defendant is sorry, or whether she’s remorseful,” Ms. Eldridge said of the defendant. “Of course she’s sorry. Of course she feels bad for what she did. There’s no dispute about that. But that has no place in your deliberations.”

“This was no little oopsie,” Eldridge emphasizes. “This was not putting the wrong date on a check. This was not entering the wrong password somewhere. This was a colossal screw-up. A blunder of epic proportions.”

In April, The New York Times reported that of 15 cases of so-called weapon confusion in the last two decades, a third of the officers were indicted, and three officers were found guilty, including the only two cases in which people were killed.

In Kimberly Potter’s trial, one of the prosecution’s expert witnesses testified that he was aware of fewer than 20 instances of what is called “weapons confusion” between a Taser and a gun since 2001.

The witness, Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies the use of force by police officers, said many police forces now train officers on how to avoid weapons confusion, which he called a “very well-known” risk.

To reduce the risk, Mr. Stoughton said, many law enforcement agencies advise officers to keep their Taser on the nondominant side of their police belt, as Ms. Potter’s was. And the companies that make stun guns have tried to make them appear more distinct from guns. Many Tasers are at least partially bright yellow, as Ms. Potter’s was.

In Ms. Potter’s case, prosecutors do not dispute that she drew her gun by mistake. They are making a case to jurors that she acted so recklessly — given her experience and training — that she should be found guilty of manslaughter.

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The shooting took place on a Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn Center, Minn., amid the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who was ultimately convicted of murdering George Floyd.

The killing of Mr. Wright, who was Black, by Ms. Potter, who is white, drew thousands of demonstrators to the Brooklyn Center Police Department for a week. At night, people threw water bottles, rocks and other items at a line of officers stationed in front of the building; the police fired tear gas, foam bullets and other projectiles at demonstrators and arrested hundreds of people that week.

What happened in the shooting?

Ms. Potter, who resigned from the Brooklyn Center Police Department shortly after the shooting, had been training another officer, Anthony Luckey, on April 11 when they pulled over Mr. Wright.

Prosecutors have said that Officer Luckey told Mr. Wright that he was being pulled over because the registration of the Buick he was driving had expired, as indicated by an outdated sticker tab on the car’s license plate, and because of an air freshener that was dangling from his rearview mirror, which is a traffic violation.

The officers ran Mr. Wright’s name in their computer system and found that a judge had issued a warrant for his arrest after he missed a court date over two misdemeanor charges. Those charges, of carrying a pistol without a permit and running away from the police, stemmed from an encounter with Minneapolis police officers in June 2020.

Ms. Potter and Officer Luckey returned to Mr. Wright’s car and asked him to step out, body camera footage showed. When the officers told Mr. Wright that there was an outstanding warrant and Officer Luckey began to handcuff him, Mr. Wright twisted out of the officer’s grip and got back into the driver’s seat.

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The body cam footage showed Officer Luckey attempting to pull Mr. Wright from the car as Ms. Potter drew a weapon and aimed it at Mr. Wright. She shouted, “I’ll Tase you!” and then “Taser! Taser! Taser!” before firing a bullet into Mr. Wright’s chest.

After Ms. Potter fired the gun, the video shows, she cursed and said, “I just shot him.” Officer Luckey and a sergeant who had arrived at the scene appeared stunned. After the shot was fired, Mr. Wright’s car moved down the street, coming to a stop when it struck another car.

In the criminal complaint filed against Ms. Potter, a special agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension described additional body camera footage that has not been released publicly. The agent, Charles Phill, wrote that Ms. Potter, moments after the shooting, had used an expletive, lamenting that she had “grabbed the wrong gun” and, a minute later, had said, “I’m going to go to prison.”

Mr. Wright was pronounced dead at the scene at 2:18 p.m., 16 minutes after he was shot.

What are the charges and possible sentences?

Prosecutors in the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office have filed two felony charges against Ms. Potter: first-degree manslaughter and second-degree manslaughter.

To convict Ms. Potter of first-degree manslaughter, jurors would need to find that Ms. Potter had caused Mr. Wright’s death while recklessly handling her gun with “such force and violence” that it was “reasonably foreseeable” that someone would be killed or suffer great bodily harm.

To convict her of the lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter, jurors would need to find that Ms. Potter had caused Mr. Wright’s death through negligence, had created “an unreasonable risk” and had consciously taken the chance of killing someone or inflicting great bodily harm.

Neither charge suggests that she intended to kill Mr. Wright.

The standard sentence for a conviction first-degree manslaughter is about seven years, though the maximum sentence is 15 years. For second-degree manslaughter, the standard sentence is four years in prison and the maximum is 10 years.

If Ms. Potter is convicted, the exact sentence would be up to a judge, though prosecutors have said they plan to seek a sentence that is harsher than the standard sentence. They have also indicated that state law would require Ms. Potter to serve at least three years in prison if she is convicted of either charge.

When Ms. Potter was first arrested, she was charged only with second-degree manslaughter. But after Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, took over the case, prosecutors with his office added the more serious manslaughter charge.

Who are the lawyers and the judge?

Representing Ms. Potter are Paul Engh and Earl Gray, lawyers who are part of the legal defense fund of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, a group that represents thousands of law enforcement officers in the state.

The lead prosecutor is Matthew Frank, an assistant attorney general who was also the lead prosecutor in Mr. Chauvin’s trial. Erin Eldridge, another assistant attorney general, is also on the prosecution team. Ms. Eldridge delivered the opening statements for the state and also led the cross-examination of Ms. Potter when she took the stand.

The judge overseeing the case is Regina M. Chu, who was appointed in 2002 when Jesse Ventura was governor. She worked in the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office for several years in the 1980s, then entered private practice, before being appointed to the bench.

Who was Daunte Wright?

Mr. Wright was remembered by friends as an upbeat character who loved to play basketball and was a supportive father to his son, Daunte Jr., who was a year old when Mr. Wright was killed.

“He always said he couldn’t wait to make his son proud,” Katie Wright, Mr. Wright’s mother, said at his funeral in April. “Junior was the joy of his life, and he lived for him every single day, and now he’s not going to be able to see him.”

In the days and weeks after Mr. Wright’s death, it emerged that he had several pending criminal charges and had been accused of being involved in two violent encounters.

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A little over a month after Mr. Wright’s death, a mother sued his estate, claiming that Mr. Wright had shot her son in the head in Minneapolis in May 2019, leaving him disabled. The mother’s lawsuit says that her son had been childhood friends with Mr. Wright but that they had fallen out and that her son had “beat up” Mr. Wright in May 2019, possibly motivating Mr. Wright to seek revenge.

The lawsuit offers no direct evidence tying Mr. Wright to the shooting, and the Minneapolis police have not made any arrests or commented on the claims in the lawsuit.

A lawyer for Mr. Wright’s estate has asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, and Ms. Wright has said the claims are hurtful.

“To run with allegations like that is pretty bad, whether they are true or not true,” she said in an interview with The Star Tribune.

In addition to the pending gun possession charge that led to the warrant, Mr. Wright was also facing charges of robbing a woman at gunpoint in December 2019.

Many who knew Mr. Wright have said he was a man who had made mistakes but had been improving his life.

A friend, Emajay Driver, said that Mr. Wright had “loved to make people laugh.” As a freshman in high school in Minneapolis, Mr. Wright had been voted a class clown. “There was never a dull moment,” Mr. Driver said.

In the eulogy at Mr. Wright’s funeral, the Rev. Al Sharpton called Mr. Wright the “prince of Brooklyn Center” and said the police had not known how many lives Mr. Wright brightened.

What do we know about Kimberly Potter?

Ms. Potter was an officer with the Brooklyn Center Police Department for 26 years before she resigned after the shooting.

She served as a field training officer and was training a less experienced colleague, Officer Luckey, when she shot Mr. Wright. She had also served as the president of the police union in recent years, prosecutors have said.

Her husband was also a police officer for 28 years in Fridley, Minn., which is just across the Mississippi River from Brooklyn Center. Before he retired, her husband was an instructor in the department, training officers in things including using Tasers and how and when to use force, according to a city newsletter.

How often do officers confuse a gun with a Taser?

While not common, there have been several instances in which police officers mistakenly fired their guns when they meant to use their Tasers.

In 2018, a rookie Kansas police officer mistakenly shot a man who was fighting with a fellow officer. In 2019, a police officer in Pennsylvania shouted “Taser!” before shooting an unarmed man in the torso. And in one of the most publicized cases, a white police officer with the Bay Area Rapid Transit agency said he had meant to fire his Taser when he fatally shot Oscar Grant III, who was Black, as Mr. Grant was lying face down on a train platform on New Year’s Day in 2009.

In April, The New York Times reported that, of 15 cases of so-called weapon confusion in the last two decades, a third of the officers involved were indicted, and in three cases — including the only two in which people were killed — the officers were found guilty.

Will Wright contributed reporting.

Ms. Potter has said that the shooting happened accidentally and that she thought she was using her Taser and not her pistol when she pulled the trigger. Prosecutors have not suggested that the shooting was intentional.

The two counts are separate and not mutually exclusive; Ms. Potter can be convicted or acquitted of either charge, or of both.

Minnesota law also allows juries to consider convicting a defendant of an “included offense” — a lesser degree of the same crime, or another lesser crime that was proved in the course of the trial — in place of a charge listed in the complaint.

Here are the charges:

COUNT I

First-degree manslaughter

One of the ways Minnesota law defines first-degree manslaughter is causing someone’s death while committing or attempting to commit a lesser crime — a misdemeanor or gross misdemeanor — in a way that a reasonable person could foresee would cause death or great bodily harm.

Specifically, prosecutors accuse Ms. Potter of causing Mr. Wright’s death through reckless handling or use of a firearm.

First-degree manslaughter is a felony, punishable by up to 15 years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $30,000. The standard sentence for someone without a criminal record, like Ms. Potter, would be about seven years.

COUNT II

Second-degree manslaughter

One of the ways Minnesota law defines second-degree manslaughter is causing someone’s death through culpable negligence, by creating an unreasonable risk and consciously taking chances of causing death or great bodily harm.

Prosecutors accuse Ms. Potter of doing so while using a firearm.

Second-degree manslaughter is a felony, punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to $20,000. The standard sentence for a person without any previous convictions would be about four years.