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gldstwmn's Journal'Outcome reached' in trial of Kim Potter, ex-officer charged in Daunte Wright's death
A Minneapolis jury reached an "outcome" on Thursday in the trial of Kim Potter, a former police officer charged with fatally shooting Daunte Wright, a Black motorist — accidentally, she's claimed, by grabbing her gun instead of a Taser.
Hennepin County Judge Regina Chu is expected to reveal the outcome — reached by a panel of two Asian Americans, one Black person and nine white people — between 1:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. CST.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/outcome-reached-trial-kim-potter-ex-officer-charged-daunte-wrights-dea-rcna9408
I'm a betting woman so I'm going to go ahead and say hung jury. I doubt they will re try her.
Prosecutor in I-70 Truck Driver Case Brags Online About Brake Trophy
While close to 4.5 million people have signed on to a Change.org petition seeking clemency for truck driver Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, who was recently sentenced in Jefferson County to 110 years in prison, those who prosecuted the case are responding much differently.
"Get yourself a trial partner as great as Trevor Moritzky. He turned a brake shoe from a semi truck into a memento. What a special gift from truly a special person," Kayla Wildeman, a prosecutor with the District Attorney's Office for the First Judicial District who was involved in the case, wrote on Facebook above a photo that shows a brake next to a diploma. "I sure am grateful this trial brought you into my career as both a colleague and a friend! Words will never convey how lucky I am to have gotten the opportunity to learn from you!"
According to the Facebook post, Moritzky, a deputy district attorney in the First Judicial District, gifted colleague Wildeman, also a deputy district attorney, a brake similar to one taken out of the truck that Aguilera-Mederos crashed on I-70 near Colorado Mills Parkway in April 2019.
The crash resulted in four deaths: 24-year-old Denver resident Miguel Angel Lamas Arellano; Doyle Harrison, a 61-year-old from Hudson; 67-year-old Arvadan William Bailey; and Stanley Politano, a 69-year-old who was also from Arva
Prosecutors threw the book at Aguilera-Mederos, who was convicted on 27 out of 41 charges stemming from the crash. The 110-year sentence came as a result of mandatory sentencing rules, which state lawmakers are already talking about reforming, owing to what they see as an egregious over-sentencing of Aguilera-Mederos.
Much of the argument in court revolved around whether Aguilera-Mederos was at fault for a crash that occurred after the brakes on his truck failed.
The brake trophy display on Facebook includes Wildeman's name, the case number and "I-70 Case."
"It is not a piece of evidence from the case. The post was in very poor taste and does not reflect the values of my administration. We have addressed it internally," says Alexis King, district attorney for the First Judicial District. King's predecessor, Peter Weir, was in charge of the office when charges were originally filed against Aguilera-Medero.
Given his judgment in awarding the trophy to a colleague, some members of the legal community wonder if Moritzky was an appropriate candidate for the several vacant district court judge positions in the metro area for which he's been considered.
And the fact that a prosecutor gifted a brake pad to a colleague is evidence of deeper problems among law enforcement officials, according to Andy McNulty, a lawyer with Killmer, Lane & Newman. "It's a grotesque example of the inhumanity of our criminal injustice system. To receive a brake pad as some sort of trophy for sentencing a man to death in prison shows the complete disregard that prosecutors have for the lives they ruin, and how they view their job as some sort of game rather than an obligation to serve justice," McNulty says
The huge sentence given to Aguilera-Mederos, a Cuban immigrant, has drawn the attention of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that calls itself the "largest and oldest Hispanic organization in the United States." On December 16, LULAC announced that it's "working on registering a formal complaint of gross misconduct with the Colorado Bar Association against First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King for abuse of power and official oppression under the color of law in filing charges against an innocent truck driver who was behind the wheel when his truck’s brakes failed."
(Snip)
[link:https://twitter.com/CB_Cotton/status/1473022243613589505?t=upj-PNPl1KGpjT72edQXXQ&s=19|
https://www.westword.com/news/prosecutor-colorado-aguilera-mederos-truck-driver-tragedy-brake-trophy-13053462
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