Unintended Consequences

We can never know, in the long run, what the effect will have. Even the best events sometimes redound in ways that weren’t anticipated. Isn’t that what’s called, “unintended consequences?” For example, the assassination of President Kennedy probably made more likely the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act – maybe the most valuable piece of legislation in the last 100 years. It is highly unlikely that this was Lee Harvey Oswald’s (and the guy on the grassy knoll’s) intent.

This phenomenon was made manifest this week. Not because Congress passed anything valuable. The most identifiable thing that any Congressperson passed recently is wind. What I‘m talking about is what happened in the course of two trials in Minnesota.

The first trial resulted in the conviction of Derek Chauvin, a despicable excuse for a human being who somehow qualified to be a police officer and who used his power to intentionally, and slowly, suffocate a black man, George Floyd. That conviction was a good thing. Then, in large part because of that, an utterly un-despicable, fully qualified but unfortunate police officer, Kim Potter, was also convicted, in her case for manslaughter. That conviction was a bad thing.

Kim Potter is the cop who mistakenly drew her gun instead of her taser. She then shot and killed a young black man named, Daunte Wright. Before I get into it, just as an aside, you have to shake your head at the irony of the names for the cast in this particular drama. The victim, whom the prosecution portrayed as having done nothing wrong, was named, “Wright”, and one of the cops with Kim Potter, who would never have considered himself this, was named “Officer Lucky.”

Anyway, both the Chauvin and Potter cases resulted in wrongful deaths of black men at the hands of white police officers. On that level, they were similar.  But, only on that level. Chauvin intentionally put his knee on the neck of George Floyd while ignoring frantic pleas from him that he couldn’t breathe and kept that knee there until after those pleas ended and Floyd breathed his last. Potter, on the other hand, made a horrible mistake. She never intended the ultimate result, and she felt irreconcilably regretful. This is not to say that Potter did nothing wrong. Of course, she did. She can and should be sued, as should the City. She was negligent. Negligence is a civil wrong – a “tort”, not a “crime.” However, the social and political pressure that justifiably arose from the horror of the George Floyd case forced the Prosecutors to charge her and the jury to convict her. 

Regardless of how unjustified Potter’s charge and conviction was, in the wake of George Floyd, how could the players here have done otherwise? The Prosecutors would have been slaughtered in the media and in the streets if they had just let Ms. Potter go. It can only be imagined that the jurors, however well-meaning they might have been, were legitimately worried that they would be identified and threatened had they declared Ms. Potter not guilty. Public pressure should never be a factor in the determination of justice. But that’s just an ideal.  It’s not the way the world works. 

You can say that the Minnesota manslaughter law allows for the prosecution of negligent acts, and you would be right. But it’s only certain negligent acts. To be manslaughter in the first degree the act must be accompanied by another crime. It was never clear in this case what that other crime was.  To be manslaughter in the second degree, there must be “culpable” negligence.  Under that law, to be “culpable” the actor has to be conscious of what they are doing – in this case, that Ms. Potter knew she was shooting a gun.  That didn’t happen. 

Kim Potter is going to prison not because of what she did, but because of what Derek Chauvin did. One could even say, not just because of Derek Chauvin, but because of what hundreds if not thousands of cops have been doing for years that went unpunished.

Beyond the irony of the names of the players here, there is even irony in the verdict – that in this Christmas season, Kim Potter is going to prison to pay the price for the sins of others.