A person on the jury that decided former officer Kim Potter's guilty verdict on manslaughter charges said holding her weapons helped sway the deadlocked jurors.
The anonymous juror said that while jurors were at one point deadlocked at "four guilty, four not guilty, and four 'I have no idea,'" the ability to hold Potter's gun and Taser and feel the difference marked "a big turning point."
"The Taser kind of feels like a mouse click whereas the trigger has some trigger draw weight. That was a key turning point," the juror told Minneapolis local news KARE 11.
The anonymous juror said the case was difficult since they weren't deciding on facts or intent.
"And at that point we were just arguing semantics and kind of in circles," the juror said. "This case was interesting because there weren’t really facts that were in dispute. It was more our interpretation of our jury instructions and the law. Those last couple days were literally just focusing in on the language of the law."
The juror was not convinced by the defense, who he said came off as unorganized.
"A lot of their antics seemed like purposeful distractions," he said. "The prosecution seemed more organized and direct and intentional. The defense seemed like they were throwing everything at us that they could. Everything from, 'It was just an honest mistake,' to 'Daunte caused his own death.' It did not feel very organized or for that matter very compelling."
The best part of the defense was the testimony of Potter and the other officers, the juror said. He said her tears and remorse on the stand came off as genuine to the jury, but their verdict came down to how they interpreted the language of the law.
"No one felt she was intentional in this," the juror said. "It's ludicrous that some people are assuming we thought she was a racist. That never even came up or anything like that. We felt like she was a good person, we felt she made a mistake, and that a mistake does not absolve you from the fact she did commit a crime ... This was just a tragedy all the way around."
By the final day and a half of deliberation, the jury had settled on the guilty verdict for manslaughter two, but two jurors were holding out on the same verdict for manslaughter one, the juror recalled. After they deliberated, they cleared up the issues that were holding them back and agreed with the majority to convict Potter on manslaughter one as well, he said.
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The juror said the discussions became heated at times, and nearly everyone cried at some point during deliberations. However, he said they all left on good terms, with gratitude for the protection they received during the trial.
Potter was convicted on two counts of manslaughter on Dec. 23 for the killing of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old black man whom she shot when he tried to flee arrest during a traffic stop. She said she thought she had drawn her Taser instead of her gun, and body camera footage showed she was repeatedly yelling, "Taser." The April incident occurred less than a year after the killing of George Floyd by police launched a summer of Black Lives Matter protests for which former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on April 20.