A2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22 , 2021
HAPPENING TODAY
For the latest updates all day, visit washingtonpost.com.
8:30 a.m. | The Commerce Department issues its third estimate of the
U.S. third-quarter gross domestic product, with 2.1 percent g rowth
expected. For developments, visit washingtonpost.com/business.
10 a.m. | The National Association of Realtors issues its existing-
home sales estimate for November, anticipating a 6.510 million annual
rate. Visit washingtonpost.com/business for details.
10 a.m. | The Atlantic Council holds a virtual discussion called “How to
Deter Russia Now.” For developments, visit washingtonpost.com/politics.
CORRECTION
l The Linguine With Butternut
Squash, Garlic and Olive Oil
recipe in the May 20, 2020, Food
section included an incorrect
nutritional analysis. The correct
analysis per serving is: calories,
674; total fat, 29 grams;
satur ated fat, 4 grams;
cholesterol, 0; sodium,
200 milligrams; carbohydrates,
92 grams; dietary fiber, 6 grams;
sugars, 4 grams; and protein,
15 grams. The corrected recipe
appears online at
washingtonpost.com/recipes.Download The
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eventsCENSUS BUREAU
Population growth
hits record lowThe U.S. population grew by
just 0.1 percent in the past year,
the lowest rate since the nation’s
founding, according to estimates
released Tuesday by the Census
Bureau — a slowdown in which
the coronavirus pandemic had a
major role.
The country’s population
increased by 392,665 in the year
ending on July 1, 2021. Some of
the reduced rate of growth can be
attributed to decreased
immigration, reduced fertility
and an aging population, trends
underway before the pandemic.
But the pandemic helped push
the rate down to almost flat
growth.
The 2020 Census showed the
slowest growth rate for any
decade since the United States
started taking a census, with the
exception of the 1930s during the
Great Depression. But the
coronavirus has exacerbated the
trend. More than 800,000 people
have died in the United States
since the pandemic began, and
mortality has also risen among
people who had indirect negative
health outcomes as a result of the
pandemic.Over three-fifths of the growth
this year, or 244,622 people, is
estimated to be from net
international migration, or the
difference between the number
of people moving into and out of
the country. Natural increase, or
the number of births minus the
number of deaths, was estimated
at just 148,043 people, a
reduction of 84 percent from two
years ago. It is the first year that
net international migration has
exceeded natural increase,
according to the bureau.
Seventeen states plus the
District of Columbia lost
population this year, with the
biggest absolute declines in New
York, California and Illinois.
Those states also saw large
numbers of people leaving for
other states. The big gest absolute
gains were in Texas, Florida and
Arizona, states that have seen
high levels of in-migration.
The D.C. population dropped
by 2.9 percent, a steep decline
compared with recent years. The
city lost about 23,000 residents
through domestic migration,
offset by a gain of about 2,
people from natural increase and
about 1,100 from international
migration. Maryland and
Virginia were more stable,
changing by minus-0.1 percent
and 0.1 percent, respectively.— Tara Bahrampour
MASSACHUSETTS
Professor convicted of
lying about China tiesA Harvard University
professor was convicted on
Tuesday of U.S. charges that he
lied about his ties to a China-run
recruitment program in a closely
watched case stemming from a
crackdown on Chinese influence
within U.S. research.
A federal jury in Boston found
Charles Lieber, a renowned
nanoscientist and the former
chairman of Harvard’s chemistry
department, guilty of making
false statements to authorities,
filing false tax returns and failing
to report a Chinese bank account.
Prosecutors had said that
Lieber, in his quest for a Nobel
Prize, in 2011 agreed to become a
“strategic scientist” at Wuhan
University of Technology in
China and through it
participated in a Chinese
recruitment drive called the
Thousand Talents Program.
Prosecutors say China uses
that program to recruit foreign
researchers to share their
knowledge with the country.
Participation is not a crime, but
prosecutors contend that Lieber,
62, illegally lied to authorities
about his involvement.
Defense lawyer Marc Mukasey
had countered that prosecutors
had “mangled” evidence to prove
Lieber’s guilt, lacked key
documents to support their
claims and relied too heavily on a
“confused” FBI interview with
the scientist after his arrest.
Lieber was charged in January
2020 as part of the Justice
Department’s “China Initiative,”
launched during former
president Donald Trump’s
administration to counter
suspected Chinese economic
espionage and research theft.
— ReutersNATIONAL SECURITY
Calif. man sentenced
for threats over voteAs Donald Trump began
contesting the presidential
election results in November
2020, CNN’s chief media
correspondent, Brian Stelter,
received a text from a man
describing Stelter’s mother’s
home, “implying he was there.”
Stelter detailed the threats
Monday night after testifying at
the sentencing hearing for
Robert Lemke, a California manwho federal investigators say
threatened about 50 people over
their truthful “statements
expressing that then-President
Trump had lost the 2020
presidential election.”
CNN anchor Don Lemon also
spoke at Lemke’s sentencing
hearing as one of the dozens of
people who had received
threatening messages.
On Monday, Lemke, 36, of Bay
Point, Calif., was sentenced to
three years in prison after he
pleaded guilty in October to
threatening an unspecified
journalist’s New York-based
family. His attorneys did not
immediately respond to requests
for comment on the sentence.
Lemke, according to the
Justice Department, sent
threatening messages to
journalists, politicians and
others between November 2020
and January 2021. As Trump
supporters stormed the U.S.
Capitol on Jan. 6, investigators
say, Lemke sent texts to a
journalist’s family member
claiming the reporter’s words
were “putting you and your
family at risk.”
That day, the brother of an
unnamed congressman
representing New York received a
similar message from Lemke.
U.S. Attorney Damian
Williams said in a statement
Monday that Lemke had refused
to accept the results of the 2020
presidential election.
Lemke used at least three
phone numbers and different
electronic accounts to mask his
identity when threatening
victims, federal investigators
wrote.
He was arrested in Bay Point,
about 35 miles from San
Francisco, on Jan. 26.
In addition to receiving time
behind bars, Lemke was
sentenced to three years of
supervised release after he leaves
prison.
— Gina Harkins2 killed after small plane,
paraglider collide: Two people
were killed after a small plane
collided with a paraglider
Tuesday morning near Houston,
officials said. The single-engine
Cessna 208 had taken off from
Bush Intercontinental Airport in
Houston when it collided midair
with the paraglider about 9:
a.m., approximately 50 miles to
the southwest near Fulshear,
Tex., according to the Federal
Aviation Administration. One
person was aboard each aircraft,
the FAA said.
— Associated PressDIGEST
Kim Potter saw Daunte Wright clearly. But belatedly.
It’s impossible to
fathom what
justice should
look like in the
death of Daunte
Wright. He was 20
years old when he
was pulled over
by Brooklyn
Center police
officers in April
and the minor traffic stop in the
Minneapolis suburb escalated
into a scuffle.
From the beginning, the stop
was a mess. The rookie police
officer approached Wright
because of expired license tags at
a time when the country’s motor
vehicle offices were backlogged
because of the coronavirus
pandemic. He stopped him for a
trifle — for an air freshener
dangling from the rearview
mirror. Wright’s paperwork was
a mess. He called his mother.
When officers discovered
Wright had an outstanding
warrant for carrying a handgun
in a public place without a state
permit, they tried to handcuff
him. Wright resisted. Kim Potter,
who was a training officer,
stepped in to assist. As the
situation turned chaotic, she
yelled “Taser, Taser, Taser,” before
mistakenly shooting and killing
Wright with her gun. In the
immediate aftermath, Potter
screamed expletives over her
deadly actions and cried out to
God in her distress. She tearfully
reckoned with what she believed
to be her due punishment. And
she saw Wright with a clarity — a
belated clarity — that too often
gets clouded over in our culture.
“Holy s---! I just shot him,”
Potter yelled, according to body-
camera video. “I grabbed the
wrong f---ing gun. I shot him.”
“Oh, my God!” she repeated,
seemingly in dismay.
“I’m going to go to prison,”
Potter said according to
prosecutors. “I killed a boy.”
In the havoc and in her panic,
Potter managed to see Wright as
a boy — not condescendingly or
dismissively, but humanely. She
recognized him as someone who,
despite having a toddler of hisown, called his mother when he
was stopped by police. She
acknowledged the he was still
immature enough to act
irrationally in the face of
authority. He was someone with
decades of possibilities ahead.
He was a boy still prone to
making rash decisions and big
mistakes. And she had killed him
over what began as a near-
nothing.
In that fleeting moment,
Potter saw what she had done.
During Potter’s trial for first-
and second-degree
manslaughter, the prosecution
didn’t argue that she intended to
use her service weapon rather
than her Taser. And the defense
didn’t deny that Potter killed
Wright. The jury was tasked with
a simple but impossible
question: What does justice look
like in the aftermath of a horrific
accident, a grave mistake, an
unforgivable act by an officer
who has sworn to serve and
protect?
The legal issues are those of
recklessness and negligence with
a firearm; the human issues are
about fallibility and remorse.
Accidents can still be a crime.
Declaring something a mistake is
not a defense. And regret is not
the equivalent of time served.Juries are sworn to make
judgments based on the law. Yet,
every case is, in some way, a
testament to the human
condition.
Wright’s death occurred while
the country was in the thick of
the Derek Chauvin trial during
which the former Minneapolis
police officer was found guilty of
murdering George Floyd.
Chauvin had wrestled the
unarmed Black man to the
ground, handcuffed him and
then kept Floyd pinned face
down under his knee as he
struggled to breathe. Floyd’s
killing had the country roiling
with anger. Civic upheaval
highlighted racial disparities
within the criminal justice
system. The failures and biases
within police departments were
front of mind as the country
reckoned with the reality that
making mistakes was a privilege
that so many Black men and
women did not have.
In the midst of this, Potter, a
White woman with 26 years of
experience as a police officer,
shot Wright, whose father is
Black and whose mother is
White. Potter made a mistake,
her lawyer Earl Gray argued. A
mistake is not a crime, he said
with a mix of ferocity andexasperation. In fact, Gr ay said,
“Daunte Wright caused his own
death” because he tried to climb
back into his car as he was being
handcuffed, and if he’d only
thrown his hands up in
surrender, none of this would
have happened. Potter made a
mistake, Gray said to the jury.
Daunte Wright made a ... what?
Potter testified during her
trial. Her facial expression was
dazed and mournful. She wailed
and her body shook. Her face
turned bright red and her fingers
pulled on her hair as if she were
at war with those fine blond
strands. Her lawyer described
her not so much as a former
police officer but as a woman,
one dressed in florals and a pale
yellow cardigan, who made a
mistake. Potter is a mere human,
he said. In the defense’s
description of the traffic stop,
Wright certainly wasn’t a b oy.
Sometimes, he wasn’t even
characterized as human. He was
simply “the car. ”
Between gasps for air, with her
voice shifting into an ever higher
pitch, she recounted the events
before and after the shooting.
During her time on the stand,
her recollections were spotty. She
covered her face in her hands,
wept and said, “I’m sorry it
happened. I’m so sorry.”
It’s impossible to tease out her
sorrow over Wright’s death from
the anguish over her own life,
which is forever altered. Her
personal pain is forever
entwined with the agony her
actions have inflicted on others.
Perhaps Potter wept for what she
has taken from Wright and his
family. Maybe she wept because
of the burden that she will carry
as she moves forward. It may
well have been some bleak swirl
of all those emotions: some
selfish, others empathetic.
Justice may well be an
impossibility in this case.
Accountability may be the best
that can be achieved. Police
officers should have to atone for
their deadly mistakes. And
Daunte Wright should have
survived his trivial one.
[email protected]Robin
GivhanTHE CRITIQUE
KEREM YUCEL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Images of Daunte Wright are left on benches outside the Hennepin
County Courthouse, where a f ormer officer is on trial in his death.12 months 0% interest
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