The Keystone Prosecutors

Henco attorney Mary Moriarty has established a “wrongful convictions” unit:

Moriarty – a former public defender – alleges that 5% of convictions in Henco are erroneous.

So – Hennepin County isn’t charging, or is grossly undercharging, all but the most egregiously, unavoidably and politically explosive cases, and is admitting that one out of every twenty convictions they did get were wrong?

Is there anything the Henco attorneys office does right?

9 thoughts on “The Keystone Prosecutors

  1. So she’s gonna be addressing that sham of a trial that Derek Chauvin went through? Not to forget his three colleagues too.

  2. Would this new unit have looked into the conviction or Trooper Londregan if Mary had been able to successfully prosecute him?

  3. Hmmm. I wonder how far back in time this unit will be investigating? I mean, if my memory serves me correctly, Senator Vanilla Fluff has a few dubious cases.

  4. This means the Hon M. Moriarty will publicly call into question the practices and judgement of Mike Freeman, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Johnson.

    Very sound political instincts on the part of Moriarty, particularly in an election year when Klobuchar is running for re-election to the Senate.

    What makes leftist women such vindictive, back-stabbing, bints?

  5. There’s certainly nothing wrong with checks-and-balances on government power. I question whether the local prosecutor’s office is the place to do it.

    “Hey, guess what, my staff and I have been lying and cheating for years. We intentionally used the power of our office to deprive the following citizens of their civil rights . . . ” That’d be Exhibit A in the lawsuit against them. Not gonna happen.

    Maybe a better idea is a new unit of the State Public Defender’s office, funded by the state and not by the county, staffed by state employees and not county employees, empowered to review cases under a state-wide measure of justice and not “that’s how we do things in our county.” Of course, that’s pretty much what the Court of Appeals is for. So maybe we already have a system in place and a duplicate system is wasteful?

    The American system depends on the good faith of the people running it. If they’re not honest, trustworthy, loyal, and impartial, no amount of rulemaking will deter bad behavior and no amount of grandstanding second-guessing can remedy it.

  6. If a GOP candidate for that office or any state office for that matter, uses this as a cudgel, they might have a chance. In fact, if I were running for office or a campaign manager, I’d pay a couple of law students to review Amy’s cases for
    any violations of law. They should also hammer home the fact that people are bailing out of Moriarty’s office like it’s a sinking ship.

    It’s past

  7. The saddest part of this proposal is my confidence the new office will be abused.

    Checklist for valid conviction:

    timely arrest and prosecution
    sufficient evidence admitted into the record
    full disclosure of any potentially exculpatory information
    impartial jury properly instructed in the law
    competent lawyer for the defense
    mob favors conviction

    Checklist for invalid conviction:

    non-white defendant
    just turning his life around
    lengthy criminal record (been persecuted by The Man for years)
    possession of a gun by ineligible person
    habitual drug user
    low IQ
    high school dropout
    mob favors release

  8. It strikes me that what is needed more than a “conviction integrity unit” is an “investigation integrity unit.” A 2017 Star-Tribune study found, for example, that only 20% of sexual assault allegations received a good basic investigation, and I’d suspect that pretty much everything short of murder is decided, more or less, on the initial police reports–detectives rarely get involved.

    To fix this–the Brady problem–the system I’d propose is that for any felony accusation, it would be required that a good basic investigation appropriate to the crime be performed (police reports alone would not suffice), and that ALL information found be revealed on a portal where the defendant and his attorney would have the keys. Also included on that portal would be information on the dispositions of related crimes by that police department, and in the state as a whole. Victims would also be able to see what was on the portal–it strikes me,per the Nassar case, that a key issue in these things is whether victims raise Hell about things not being done.

    So all in all, if an investigation was done half-heartedly, or not at all, it would be visible to all, and if one defendant was being given treatment that others did not, it would be obvious, and if the information was not put on the portal, it would be actionable.

    One other note; Moriarty’s office needs to address the fact that for too many defendants, the “process is the punishment”, and a big part of dealing with that issue is getting a good view of what the evidence actually is. If you’re forced to answer questions like “is it likely the defendant was provoked?”, then your likelihood of going forward with just the initial police reports is a lot less.

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