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?

In the immediate aftermath of declaring that realizing the non-charges against Trooper Londregan were “anti-queer” (???), Henco Attorney Mary Moriarty tells us that all that talk about crime in her jurisdiction is fearmongery:

During a May 28 event, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty explained she believes there’s an effort to cause the public to fear crime.

“Moderate Democrats have done a lot of work in making people afraid of downtown Minneapolis,” she said. “There is a concerted effort to make people afraid of crime.”

The conversation took place between Moriarty and Dr. T. Anansi Wilson, a Mitchell Hamline School of Law professor. The discussion centered around being “good trouble” and activism.

Quick – which “protected class” suffers least from society”s alleged intesectionalities – a lesbian county attorney or a black tenured law professor?

“Crime is down”

VIolent crime? In Minneapolis? Not as of yesterday, it isn’t:

This is the sort of thing they talk about inside the echo chamber:

She also discussed her advice for current law students, which was to ask more questions. “You talk about the rule of law, it’s like, what is that? I mean, I kind of wonder how anybody talks about the rule of law now. Wasn’t Roe v. Wade rule of law? I mean, what happened to that?” Moriarty said.

To the modern ultra left,

• “innocent until proven guilty” is “anti-queer”
• “democracy” is “getting what we want”
• “rule of law” is “making sure we get what we want”.

The only upside? If today’s generation of Henco voters actually do replace Moriarty, it’ll be with someone worse.

The city of Minneapolis just released the dispatch report re the Officer Jamal Mitchell shooting.

A good guy with a car [1] apparently rammed shooter Mustafa Mohammed, who was apparently attacking a bystander on a scooter, possibly breaking his leg and immobilizing him:

According to the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) report, before police arrived on the scene, the driver of a Subaru came across the Suspect, Mustafa Mohamed, outside the apartment where he’s reportedly just shot two people. 
ossibly breaking his leg.

The witness says after he hit him, Mohamed reached into his waistband and pulled out what was possibly a gun, and started firing. Police arrived shortly thereafter.

I’d bet a shiny new quarter Moriarty charges the good samaritan driver, but I don’t think anyone’ll take the bet.

[1] whose name is clearly visible in Fox9’s video on the story.

Block a freeway? Burn down a neighborhood? Jack a car, rob a store, shoot up on a train, b**w a john on a bus, attack someone on a train platform?

Mary Moriarty’s got your back.

Exercise your first amendent right to demonstrate for Mary Moriarty’s enemies, whoever they are, wherever you are?

You’re a threat to democracy:

Mary Moriarty is the real authoritarian – or “fascist”, as the kids are calling ’em these days.

UPDATE: Here’s Londregan’s attorney, Chris Madel’s response.

And let me tell you…

…it may be the best press conference I’ve seen since Norman Schwartzkopf’s wartime pressers. More drop-mic moments than a “Freddie Mercury” night at a karaoke bar.

Wish we could get this guy to run for Senator or Governor, if he’s GOP.

As if ther’s not enough to talk about today already.

It didn’t take a legal expert to know that the charges against State Patrol trooper Ryan Londregan were unsustainable.

Mary Moriarty had to spend a million bucks [1] to find that out.

Which, we found out during the weekend news dump, she apparently did:

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Sunday that she will dismiss murder and manslaughter charges against state trooper Ryan Londregan in the shooting death of motorist Ricky Cobb II last summer.

Moriarty told the Star Tribune that her unexpected decision comes in response to a prosecution expert’s new analysis of video from the scene and recent statements by Londregan’s defense attorney.

But rest assured, progressive base – it’s not because she doesn’t want to stick it to a copper:

“We could theoretically prosecute this and just let the jury decide,” she said. “However, we ethically can’t do that because we don’t believe at this point that we can disprove that affirmative defense.”

“This is not a situation of us backing down,” Moriarty said, adding that the killing last week of Minneapolis police officer Jamal Mitchell did not influence her decision.

“It is a situation of recognizing that, given all the barriers that are put in place in these types of cases and the new information that came up, we just can’t ethically go forward.”

Londregan’s attorney was refreshingly un-lawyerly in his comments:

“It’s about goddamn time,” [Attorney Chris] Madel said. “That’s going to be about my only on-the-record comment.”

Everything Mary Moriarty touches turns to crap.

Almost-and-hopefully-future Attorney General Jim Schultz spoke for many of us:

Actualy justice, of course, would involve Mary Moriarty filing for unemployment, and possibly lawyering up to face litigation for the damage she’s caused.

Yet she will win re-election with 85% of the vote, unless an actual political opposition erupts in Minneapolis.

If you live in District Six in Hennepin County – this area here…:

…you need to get out and vote Marisa Simonetti for Hennepin County Commission in the special election being held today.

She’s an unknown conservative who ran in the runoff three weeks ago, spent about $700, and got 33% of the vote with no name recognition, running against Mary Moriarty’s spouse and at least one candidate who spent $70K to try to build name recognition, in a runoff. That took her to the final round, today:

Her opponent is Heather Edelson – a sitting Legislator whose sole “accomplishment” was writing a bill that would have banned gas powered lawn mowers in the state. “Lawncare Barbie” has name recognition – and literally nothing else.

Simonetti’s a dark horse – but given the tiny turnout in these special elections for county races, anything is possible.

So:

• If you live in the area in the map above – basically all of Henco south of 394 and west of 169 – get to the polls. Bring your family. Extort your kids. Whatever it takes.
• If you don’t live in this district, make sure any family you do have in the area turn out and vote for Simonetti.

This would really shock the world.

So let’s do it

When I saw Angie Craig jamming Mary Moriarty into the wood chipper last week…

…. I figured there was a reason.

And MPR apparently thinks so as well:

Most congressional districts in the nation and in Minnesota are considered either firmly Republican or Democratic. That’s not the case in the 2nd District, which comprises much of the south metro area, but also stretches deep into rural south-central Minnesota. 

The combination of near-urban, suburban and rural voters makes the district viable ground for both parties.

The district’s Republican Party Chair, Joseph Ditto, said 2024 is his party’s best opportunity in years to defeat Craig, who won the prior three elections by close margins. 

Of course, the DFL money and media machines will be working overtime to put lipstick on the metaphorical progressive pig that Craig is once she goes to DC:

Craig has a massive fund-raising advantage. Craig has raked in more than $3 million for this race so far. That’s more than five times as much as her Republican challengers raised combined.

Craig had more than $2 million in the bank to start the year.

Outside groups have also indicated plans to play heavily in the district, one of relatively few targeted races in the country.

In a district where independent voters will prove pivotal, Craig is promoting efforts to reach agreement with Republicans on issues ranging from combatting fentanyl smuggling to stopping congressional pay raises. Five press releases in March alone use “bipartisan” in the headline.

We’ve been used to Craig rolling out TV ads driving offroad in a Jeep, to try to burnish her “not like those DFLers” cred.

I fully expect to see a new one with her at the range with matching AK47s in each hand.

Gang carjacks an SUV, goes on a Tarantino-ready crime spree:

The only real question: what ethical and moral gymnastics will Mary Moriarty go through to make sure none of them serves a moment in prison?

That might not be the result of this episode – at least, I but this past Tuesday Shivanthi Sathanandan, a Minnesota state DFL executive who advocated defunding the police gets the living crap beating out of her by carjackers.

And yep, she was one of those DFLers::

In her June 2020 post, Sathanandan thanked two Minneapolis City Council members for their “radical leadership” in working to “dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.”

“We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. Say it with me,” she wrote.

This past Tuesay, Sathanandan it was in her own yard when…:

“Four very young men, all carrying guns, beat me violently down to the ground in front of our kids. The young men held our neighbors up at gunpoint when they ran over and tried to help me. All in broad daylight,” DFL Second Vice Chair Shivanthi Sathanandan wrote in a public Facebook post, which included a picture of her face after the alleged assault.

“Look at my face in the picture. This is the face of a mother who just had the sh$t beaten out of her. A mother whose only thought was, ‘let me run far enough and fight hard enough so that my kids have a chance to get away.’ This is the face of a mother who just listened to her four-year-old daughter screaming non-stop, her seven-year-old son wailing for someone to come help because bad guys are murdering his Mama in the backyard, her neighbors screaming in outrage … all while being beaten with guns and kicks and fists,” she said.

It’s not Sathanandan’s job to add that if any of those neighbors had responded with the kind of force that could have ended the assault, Mary Moriarty would likely have prosecuted them far more harshly than the carjackers themselves.

But unlike some previous victms, who’ve blamed “the system” and themselves, Sathanandan reaches a rational conclusion:

“And I have rage. These men knew what they were doing. I have NO DOUBT they have done this before. Yet they are still on OUR STREETS. Killing mothers. Giving babies psychological trauma that a lifetime of therapy cannot erase. With no hesitation and no remorse,” she said.

“We need to get illegal [!!! – Ed.] guns off of our streets, catch these young people who are running wild creating chaos across our city and HOLD THEM IN CUSTODY AND PROSECUTE THEM,” she said. “Look at my face. REMEMBER ME when you are thinking about supporting letting juveniles and young people out of custody to roam our streets instead of HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.”

.

It’s natural – and in some cases appropriate, and in Sathanandan’s case documentably true. The DFL does in fact own the situation. And I do pile schadenfreud on the

But I’m going to urge people to take the opportunity to see the opportunity, here. Sathanandan may never become a law-and order conservative – but Minneapolis got where it is incrementally, and any improvement will be at least as incremental.

And if you’re so inclined, pray for those kids. The fruits of the politics of the parents shouldn’t be visited on the kids.

Much less their neighbors.

UPDATE. There is speculation that this is staged. Some are make a plausible case. The blood doesn’t look like any head laceration usually looks (and believe me, I’ve had a few), and she takes a pretty composed-looking photo for someone with a broken leg.

OTOH: the hoax, if it is one, benefits conservatives, and even the Frey administration, against whom the Minneapolis DFL is mustering money and votes.

Not saying that’s not plausible – but why?

Mary Moriarty broke with a couple decades of Henco Prosecutor tradition and used the State’s sentence enhancement for using a gun in a crime:

Wait – wut?

A north Minneapolis man has been sentenced to 15 1/2 years in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release for illegal possession of a firearm after engaging in a shootout in north Minneapolis.

Charges in the Dec. 20, 2021, case say police found Dominique Marquise McCaskel with a gunshot wound to his neck and shoulder on the 3600 block of Aldrich Avenue North after responding to a report of a shooting.

According to the charging document and dispatch audio at the time, police subsequently located surveillance video that showed McCaskel walking at the location as a suspect vehicle rounded the corner. McCaskel was seen on video running toward the suspect vehicle and an exchange of gunfire ensued. Casings were initially located by police, and a witness came forward and showed police where the gun was that had been in McCaskel’s possession at the time of the gunfire exchange and shooting. Police also found that McCaskel had several suspected fentanyl pills and cash on his person.

The Feds did it?

Yep. I was just yanking your collective chain. Moriarty has never used the state’s sentence enhancement for using a gun in a crime. Either did Freeman before her. I don’t know that Klobuchar ignored it when she was Henco prosecutor, so I won’t say one way or the other, but let’s be honest, probably not.

In Ramco? Choi has never used it – his office even specifically denied it was an appropriate charge in a case where it was clearly precisely appropriate. Either did Susan Gaertner before him. Either did Tom Foley before her.

Hennepin County is letting the Feds do the heavy lifting.

Huh. Wonder why?

The Feds are on the case in Minneapolis, going after the gangland bosses who, we’re told, are driving the crime.

Getting mobsters off the street is a good start.

But this is also a very bad sign.

This is Minneapolis, Hennepin iCounty and the State’s job. Having the Feds do it just means that Jacob Frey won’t have to answer, personally, to the “Progressive” goon squad that bedevils him; that Mary Moriarty doesn’t have to explain to the “progressives” who own her why she’s rounding up gangsters; why Governor Klink doesn’t have to take flak from the “progressives” that have wires hooked to his giblets.

It’s cowardice, and political expediency.

This is what “Restorative Justice” looks like:

The crime – the victim’s ex-boyfriend bought a gun for two juveniles to kill her new boyfriend and, if she got in the way, her as well – was egregious enough that even the fairly useless Mike Freeman was trying to charge the juveniles as adults.

The “boys” will now be out after a couple years in the Red Wing juvenile facility.

I’m offering the parents (and/or their advocates) an hour on the NARN to tell us how “restorative” they find Mary Moriarty’s idea of “justice”.

The goal of the Soros-funded district attorney is to make people distrust the system – by punishing the law-abiding and coddling the depraved – to the point where they demand a dictator to keep them safe.

We warned Hennepin County that that was Mary Moriarty’s goal.

The Good News: The tl:DR version of the story found in Alpha News’s tweet isn’t a great summary of the case.

The Bad News: the actual facts are even worse:

Her campaign was opposed by 32 senior Hennepin County prosecutors, including Catherine McEnroe, who is now under investigation by the Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility, according to the Star Tribune.

McEnroe was leading the prosecution of 35-year-old Marco Tulio Rivera Enamorado, who was charged with one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He allegedly raped his 14-year-old cousin when he was invited from Honduras to come live with her family in the summer of 2019.

McEnroe is accused of fabricating the contents of a note that was passed to her by a victim advocate during Enamorado’s trial Jan. 6.

So – so far, what we have is a prosecutor who went on record opposing Moriarty (bad career move) lying to a judge (bad legal move). Hard to tell, to a layman, if this is incompetence, revenge, or both.

But it gets worse; rather than take the hit and go forward with a different prosecutor in this rape case, Moriarty dismissed the chargfes:

A source with knowledge of the situation said there was no reason for the case to be dismissed, especially since two other prosecutors offered to take over the case.

“The conduct of the county attorney trying the case had nothing to do with the substance of the actual trial,” the source said. “That attorney absolutely could have continued on with the case. If there was concern about her candor to the court, then a supervisor could have acted as co-counsel to ensure the court that there would be truthfulness.”

Moriarty said her priority from the beginning was “trying to see if we could continue to prosecute this case, whether now or later after a mistrial might be declared.”

So Enamorado is free, can never be tried for the case again, and Mike Freeman is looking better and better.

You voted for this, Hennepin County.

On Friday morning, someone tried to jack a van in the Phillips Neighborhood.

The would-be victim tackled the suspect and held him til the cops arrived.

Point of order: in a Minneapolis where Mary Moriarty is the district attorney, is the suspect…:

• The vanjacker, or
• the guy who tackled the vanjackier?

With Mary Moriarty in office as Henco “prosecutor”, one must not assume.

To: Hennepin County
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: You’re Screwed Blue

Dear HennCo

I can’t believe I missed this; your new co-chief public defender (FKA “County Prosecutor”) was sworn in this past week.. As befits an unserious person in an unserious city at an unserious time, she was sworn in on a comic book:

The new attorney of Hennepin County, Mary Moriarty, took her oath of office Tuesday with her hand placed on a copy of a graphic novel about the late congressman John Lewis.

Photos from the swearing-in ceremony show Moriarty with her hand on a copy of “March,” which she described as a “graphic novel trilogy about Congress Member John Lewis and his courageous fight for voting rights.”

A comic book.

I may start rooting for the criminals at this rate.

Oh, yeah – no surprises here:

“Research and data show that non-restorative models of punishment do not prevent recidivism, do not repair families, and cause harm to a community. Incarceration, sometimes a year or more after a crime is committed, disconnects the punishment from the impact of a crime on a victim,” she says on her campaign website.

“Incarceration disconnects the person who committed violence from their community and makes reintegration extremely difficult,” the website adds. “Mary’s office will seek to provide an alternative to traditional prosecution through restorative justice as an option for victims.”

She also opposes the cash bail system, which is “not helping to make our community safer.”

So strap in, HennCo. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.

I used to think DFLers merely counted on voters being ignorant.

I was young and naive.

They actively promote ignorance:

Senator Morrison is an M.D, so she certainly isn’t stupid. She must know that the imponderably vast majority of those “children”. are boys aged 14+ who are involved in crime, mostly murdered by other young men like themselves, likewise started on the wrong path bright and early in life.

She must know that the only things that actually work to prevent that sort of carnage are:

• Using the sentencing enhancements for gun crimes that so helped in cleaning up New York City thirty years ago – the type that Mike Freeman and John Choi never use on criminals of any age, and that Mary Moriarty hahahahahahaha I can’t even finish the sentence with a straight face.
• Intervening with youth at risk of going into The Life.

Certainly she’s had this shown to her. There’s no way that hasn’t happened.

So she’s counting on promoting ignorance.

Look for a lot of that this session.

You voted for Mary Moriarty for Henco Attorney.

Granted, it was a closer race than one might have expected; the endorsed DFLer won by 20 points, rather than the expected 40-50.

Still, Henco spoke: they’re OK with carjackings, home invasions, random gunfire ripping through (black and brown people in North Minneapolis) houses, and criminals getting sprung over and over.

They made their choices. Now, they’ll be getting the consequences, good and hard:

Great job, voters. Enjoy the abortions.

[1] Yes, formally you’re still “citizens”. But honestly, “subjects” is a better term.

I wouldn’t say there was much in the way of “surprises“ in the primaries last night. Mostly confirmation of existing hunches, and a brief stab of hope followed by waves and waves of confirmation that Minneapolis is not only screwed, but seems hell-bent on participating in its own screwing.

The marquee race, Don Samuels tackling Ilhan Omar, ended up a lot closer than I, or anyone, I suspect, figured it might.

That is painfully close. A few hundred people who kvetch about crime turning out? A few hundred Republicans crossing over? An errand thunderstorm? All could’ve affected the results enough to retire Omar.

I have to expect the results surprised congresswoman Omar as well; she ran almost no television, and a fairly languid campaign up until the frenzied (and occasionally tone deaf) tour with The Squad this past week. Primaries usually draw the party’s loyalists to the polls – the hard-core who also go to caucuses and the next layer outward. In Minneapolis. that generally means white, upper-middle-class progressives, and public union employees. I haven’t looked at the precinct results yet, but I have to suspect Samuels started getting people to the polls who normally wait ’til November, if at all, to vote.

Omar pulled it off by two points. If she doesn’t focus on crime, and Minneapolis continues to deteriorate, someone else – Samuels, or some new law and order DFLer – might have a shot.

Which is probably the closest thing we can find to a silver lining on the next two races.

In Hennepin County races, the top two finishers in the primary go onto the general election. and if the choices of the county voters gave themselves last night are any indication, there is going to be a big opportunity for a “law and order“ candidate in two years.

It’s hard to come up with an adjective phrase even softer than “soft on crime” to describe the choices that will move to the November ballot. Mary Moriarty and Martha Holton Dimick will be the “options“ this fall for Hennepin county attorney. Mori

And for sheriff, committed progressive Dawanna Witt will square off against Joseph “Who?” Banks. When Witt wins, she will make Dave Hutchinson look like Ted Nugent.

Last night – at least as re the CD5 DFL primary – was a little spasm of common sense and protest voting in the highest profile race in the city, the results are fairly clear; the people who come out of the primaries are fine with Minneapolis’s status quo.

On the other hand, the DFL finally cut itself loose from its biggest public relations boondoggle of 2020; John Thompson got pummeled, with a level of voting that suggests orders went out from party HQ:

And in house district 52 a – the area around my radio station – the reliably moderate, center left Sandy Mason got pummeled…

by…

Liz Reyer.

Liz who?

I don’t know who she is, but she pulled off the exceptionally difficult combination of “ELCA hair“ and pink. Not just literally, but figuratively and morally:

So Eagan has moved from center left to “Alandra Cano“ territory.

On the GOP side: Jim Schultz beat back a challenge from Doug Wardlow, to advance to run against Keith Ellison for Attorney General this fall.

Every time I see these, I have to ask – who are the 12 freaking percent of people who vote for Sharon Anderson?

I’ve got nothing against Wardlow; I’ve emceed or spoken at five of his fundraisers over the years. but I’m having a bigger and bigger problem with people defying the party endorsement. Especially after saying they would honor it.

Speaking of honoring endorsements: in the new 33B, endorsed candidate Mark Bischofsky prevailed over Tina Riehle, a candidate supported by most of the GOP brass (including Kurt Daudt and Karin Housley, who took a break from opining for the sanctity of the endorsement to float Riehle against the endorsed candidate, for reasons I am just not advanced enough an intelligence to figure out)

Here’s hoping the GOP can pull it together enough to get behind the primary winner, and flip that very winnable seat.

City of Minneapolis reaches an independent settlment with the Floyd family…

…just in time to jeopardize the Chauvin trial.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called it a milestone. The city council unanimously approved the settlement.

Announcing the settlement in the middle of jury selection for the murder trial of Derek Chauvin confused legal experts.

“It was absolutely terrible timing, I would say for both sides,” said Mary Moriarty, the former chief public defender in Hennepin County.

Prospective jurors in the trial can still be questioned about their thoughts on the settlement, but Moriarty says no one knows how the news will affect the seven already seated.

“Most jurors I think would perceive [the settlement] as the city’s belief that Chauvin did murder George Floyd and that they are liable,” Moriarty said.

It’s assumed that it’d be very difficult to insulate any jury from hearing about the settlement.

Given the Minneapolis City Council’s performance over the past year, it’s hard to guess whether it was incompetence, malice or arrogance.

I say “Its the Minneapolis City Council. Why choose?”