A day after Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced she would drop murder and manslaughter charges against a Minnesota state trooper, Gov. Tim Walz, who has publicly criticized Moriarty’s handling of the case, revealed he planned to use his legal authority to remove her from the prosecution.
“Yes, we would have done that,” Walz said at a news conference Monday, adding, if Moriarty had not dropped the charges against 27-year-old Ryan Londregan for the shooting of motorist Ricky Cobb II, he would have taken action “soon.”
“I think what became apparent to many folks is is that there were problems with prosecution from the beginning,” he said.
Moriarty told the Star Tribune Sunday she decided to dismiss the charges due to new evidence that raised ethical concerns about proceeding — not for political motivations. She said she had never heard from the governor and didn’t know if he planned to take away the case, as a police organization had requested, but she believed it was possible due the present “politicized environment,” especially after the murder of a Minneapolis police officer last week.
“Who knows, right? And that would be tragic,” she said. “I mean, I am capable of doing my job. I am doing it here, right? It will probably have some political consequences for me, but as I’ve always said, the people didn’t elect me to make political decisions. They elected me to make courageous ethical decisions.”
Moriarty said the decision was based on a prosecution expert’s new analysis of video from the scene and statements from Londregan’s lawyer about what his client planned to say on the stand. The attorney, Chris Madel, said in an April court hearing that Londregan feared for his partner’s life because he believed Cobb was reaching for Londregan’s gun. Moriarty said the defense team had not previously raised this legal claim, and another review of the video showed Cobb’s hand flailing upward, which the expert determined made the shooting lawful.
“This is not a situation of us backing down,” Moriarty said. “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.”
Before Walz made those comments Monday, Moriarty criticized Walz for his past comments on how her office handled the case, given Walz oversees the Department of Public Safety and therefore the State Troopers and Londregan.
“I think it’s because I’m a queer woman in this role,” Moriarty told the Star Tribune. “I think it’s because he looks at the political winds and which way they’re blowing and I think that’s what he reacts to. Which is horrible. You know, if we want people to trust the system, that’s not the way to do it.”
Walz denied bias played into his comments. “Well that’s false,” he said. “Next question.”