Daunte Wright's mother said the justice system "murdered him all over again" after ex-cop
"This is the problem with our justice system today," Katie Bryant said at a press conference. "White women tears trump justice."
Former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter was sentenced to at least 16 months in prison on Friday. She faces an additional 8 months on her sentence but could be released from prison on probation for good behavior. In December, a jury convicted Potter of manslaughter for the killing of Daunte Wright in April 2021.
Potter shot the 20-year-old Black man in the chest during a traffic stop and claimed at trial that she meant to grab her Taser instead of her gun. Prosecutors had argued that her Taser was holstered on the opposite side of her body.
Bryant said she felt like the justice system "murdered" her son "all over again" at a press conference after the sentencing.
"To sit there and pouring my heart out in my victim impact statement that took so long to write, and I rewrote it over and over again, to not get a response out of the judge but then when it came down to sentencing Kim Potter, she broke out in tears," Bryant said at the press conference.
Wright's father called the sentence a "slap on the wrist." At the press conference, Arbuey Wright said the family felt "tricked."
"It gave us a little sense of hope, like, you know, things were gonna get a little bit better, but now, I walked out of this courthouse feeling like people are laughing at us because this lady got a slap on the wrist," he said. "And we're still, every night, sitting around crying, waiting for my son to come home."
Arbuey Wright told reporters that it felt like the justice system "was so tied up" in Potter's feelings that it "forgot" that his son was killed.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents the family, said at the press conference that people in Minnesota have been sentenced to longer prison terms for selling marijuana than the sentence Potter received for Wright's killing.
Crump said he told Wright's family that he thought they would be able to receive "equal justice" before the trial, but they were skeptical.
"We tried to encourage them to believe that there is equal justice in America, but when we have sentences like this, it makes it difficult to make those arguments," Crump said at the press conference.