Her conviction came not long after Derek Chauvin was found guilty of killing George Floyd by kneeling with all his weight on Floyd’s neck for nearly 10 excruciating minutes. Chauvin and his fellow police officers had detained and handcuffed Floyd on suspicion that he’d passed a $20 counterfeit bill.

These convictions are as they should be.

I don’t doubt that the regret Potter expressed over Wright’s death was and is genuine. It’s also likely that she genuinely thought she was going to use her taser rather than her gun during the tragedy—even though the taser was holstered on her other hip.

But the fact is that she violated Minnesota law. Even her defense team acknowledged that—perhaps inadvertently—by basing her case on the remorse she felt and the pressures of the moment rather than a defense of her actions under the law.

If they’d had an argument to make under Minnesota law, doubtless they would have made it.

This is important.

If we don’t hold accountable for breaking the law those who are empowered to enforce it, the idea of law itself loses meaning.

It is true that police officers are human beings and make mistakes, just as the rest of us do.

Most of us, though, must pay for our mistakes. When the mistake costs another human being his life, that payment often is a stiff one.

Potter likely will spend several years in prison paying for her error.

That is unfortunate for her.

But it was even more unfortunate for Daunte Wright.

That brings us to another reason Potter’s conviction matters.

The rationale for the traffic stop that ended Wright’s life was that his car had an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. Minnesota law states that the front windshield view cannot be obstructed in any way.

I have family in the Twin Cities and visit there. I often drive because I like to see the country on the way and have my own car while I’m there.

I have a parking permit for my workplace on my rearview mirror. It hangs down about as far as an air freshener would.

It, too, is a violation of Minnesota law. (Now that I know this is the case, I will take the permit down when I drive in the state.)

In all my travels to Minneapolis and St. Paul, I’ve never been pulled over because my front windshield view was obscured in a minor way. I certainly never have been threatened with a taser or a gun.

That may be because I’m an old white guy, not a young Black one.

If I were pulled over, most likely the officer or officers simply would ask me to remove the permit and then send me on my way. The incident never would have a chance to escalate to violence and tragedy because certain presumptions would be made in my favor.

That wasn’t the case for Daunte Wright.

He died, without a trial, because there was an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror of the car he was driving.

George Floyd died, also without a trial, because he might have passed a $20 counterfeit bill. (If he did, it’s impossible to know now whether he even realized it was counterfeit.)

In a just country—one that honors the rule of law—neither offense merits anything close to the death penalty.

The fact that two men died—and that many others do for other such relatively trivial offenses—is a crime.

And it is just that the people who committed the crime will pay for it.