EXPLAINER: What’s behind ‘sordid’ evidence at Potter trial?

By STEVE KARNOWSKI and AMY FORLITI
Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — After prosecutors spent nearly a day reconstructing the moments after a suburban Minneapolis police officer shot and killed Daunte Wright, one of her attorneys had heard enough. Paul Engh asked for a mistrial, decrying the “sordid pictures” that he said were irrelevant and were shown repeatedly to inflame the jury’s sympathies. But those details and the testimony of secondary witnesses are part of a bigger-picture prosecution strategy at former Brooklyn Center Officer Kim Potter’s trial. Prosecutors want to not only convict her of manslaughter, but to send her to prison for a longer term than she could get otherwise.