Mystal: Kim Potter's Sentence Was 'The Spit In Our Face'
Former Minneapolis police officer, Kim Potter, got an absurdly light sentence yesterday for the killing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright - just two years, when the sentencing guidelines called for six to eight years. The judge who delivered the sentence, Regina Chu, asked for sympathy for the white police officer with the gun, telling the young man's family it was his killer for whom she shed actual tears.
Compounding the degrading, dehumanizing treatment of this already traumatized, grieving family, Judge Chu saw fit to weaponize the words of the first Black president of the United States, Barack Obama, in justifying her outrageous request for people in the courtroom to put themselves in Potter's place.
"As President Barack Obama once said, learning to stand in somebody else's shoes to see through their eyes that's how peace begins. and it's up to you to make that happen," pontificated Chu from the bench, pleading for sympathy for the white woman who's gun killed a 20-year-old Black man pulled over for an expired tag and an air freshener hanging in his car.
Joy Reid noted some quotes from Black leaders about the utter hypocrisy and murderous double-standard woven into our justice system before inviting The Nation's justice correspondent, Elie Mystal to weigh in on the sentencing.