A possible hung jury looms over the Kim Potter trial as deliberations reached an impasse upon entering its 13th hour on Tuesday evening.
After closing arguments on Monday, the jury deliberated the verdict for five hours on whether or not to convict former officer Kim Potter of manslaughter for the shooting of Daunte Wright earlier this year. On Tuesday, after deliberating for another eight hours, the jury asked reportedly asked Judge Regina Chu “what they should do if they cannot agree on a verdict,” according to Fox News.
“If a jury cannot reach consensus, what is the guidance around how long and what steps should be taken?” read the jury’s question that the judge shared with the court.
Judge Chu then re-read instructions that were given to the jury before deliberations began on Monday.
“You should decide the case for yourself but only after you should have discussed the case with your fellow jurors and have carefully considered their views,” the judge told the jury.
“You should not hesitate to re-examine your views and change your opinion if you become convinced they are erroneous, but you should not surrender your honest opinion simply because other jurors disagree, or merely to reach a verdict,” she added.
The judge overruled an objection from Potter’s defense claiming that by rereading the instructions, the jury would focus only on those particular instructions while ignoring all other previous instructions.
In April of this year, 26-year police veteran Kim Potter mistakenly shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright, an unarmed black man, when she confused her handgun for a taser as Wright resisted arrest. During her testimony last week, Potter broke into tears, pleading that she did not mean to shoot him.
“I was very distraught. I just shot somebody. I’m sorry it happened,” she said through her tears. “I’m so sorry.”
The prosecution leaned heavily on the fact that Potter did not immediately attend to Wright’s wounds after she shot him, collapsing on the curb in shock upon realizing that she mistakenly shot him, calling her actions a “colossal screw-up.”
“This was not putting the wrong date on a check. This was not entering the wrong password somewhere. This was a colossal screw-up,” Prosecutor Erin Eldridge told the jury. “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.”
Potter’s defense charged that Wright caused his own death by resisting arrest and that Potter’s mistake should not be made a crime.
“Daunte Wright caused his own death, unfortunately,” defense attorney Earl Gray said. “In the walk of life, nobody’s perfect. Everybody makes mistakes… My gosh, a mistake is not a crime. It just isn’t in our freedom-loving country.”
In the event of a hung jury, the judge will have to declare a mistrial, leaving it to the prosecutor to decide if the defendant will be tried again, if a plea bargain will be granted, or if the charges will be dropped entirely.