Minnesota prosecutor was reluctant to drop murder charge against trooper, but ultimately did

MINNEAPOLIS– A progressive Minnesota prosecutor elected on the basis of police accountability has reluctantly dropped charges against a state trooper who fatally shot a black man after a traffic stop.

After months of heavy criticism, even from the state’s Democratic governor, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty on Monday stood by her original decision to charge Trooper Ryan Londregan in the killing of Ricky Cobb II last summer. She says new evidence makes the case difficult to prove.

Moriarty, a former chief public prosecutor for the province, was elected in 2022 with almost 58% of the votes. Her announcement shows that charging crimes is never easy, even in the same county where Derek Chauvin was convicted The murder of George Floyd in 2020.

Moriarty said she still believes she made the right decision to charge Londregan based on the evidence available at the time. But she said a newly raised defense claim that Londregan believed Cobb was reaching for Londregan’s gun, along with new testimony from State Patrol officials supporting claims that he followed his training, made the case impossible to prove. So she papers filed on Sunday to reject it.

“I was elected by the people of Hennepin County to make ethical, courageous decisions,” Moriarty said. “This is the kind of attorney everyone wanted, not someone who made decisions based on politics.”

The resignations come as progressive prosecutors and candidates in several liberal strongholds across the country have faced setbacks as frustrations over public safety have grown.

Last month, centrist DA candidate Nathan Vasquez was ousted in Oregon incumbent progressive prosecutor Mike Schmidt in Multnomah County, next promise to get tough on crime. Last month in San Francisco, Alameda County supervisors establish a recall election for District Attorney Pamela Price, who, like Moriarty, ran on a platform of offender rehabilitation and police accountability. Price was replaced Chesa Boudinanother progressive prosecutor that voters remembered earlier in 2022.

Governor Tim Walz said Moriarty ultimately “came to the right decision” and that it became clear that “there were problems with this prosecution from the beginning.”

Walz denied Moriarty’s accusations that he had interfered in the case, but also told reporters that he would have used his power to take the case from her and hand it to the attorney general’s office if she filed the charges had not withdrawn. He said these powers provide a “safety net” to “correct an egregious situation like this.”

Leaders of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, which ran a high-profile campaign She urged Walz to take up Moriarty’s case, saying her statements about her decision were “unhinged” and “riddled with vengeance.” Republican politicians quickly repeated their claims that Londregan should never have been charged.

“Former Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner. a Democrat, said this case is an example of how the criminal justice system has become increasingly politicized.

“You have a prosecutor who was very transparent during the campaign about what her priorities were and what she planned to do in office. Police accountability was one of those priorities,” Gaertner said in an interview. “In this case, it appears that she made a good faith decision to pursue this matter, but when other information came to her attention, she dismissed it. That was the ethical thing to do. And I’m sure it wasn’t easy.”

On July 31, troopers stopped 33-year-old Cobb on Interstate 94 because his car’s lights were out. They discovered that the A Spring Lake Park man was wanted for violating a domestic restraining order in neighboring Ramsey County. Londregan arrived to help. As the officers told Cobb to get out of the car, he pulled into the driveway and took his foot off the brake. As Cobb’s car began to move slowly forward, Londregan reached for his gun. Cobb stopped. Londregan pointed his gun at Cobb and yelled at him to get out. Cobb took his foot off the brake again while another trooper’s torso was at least partially inside the car. Londregan then shot Cobb twice, hitting him in the chest both times.

Body camera video shows Cobb raising his hand moments before Londregan shot him. Moriarty said the video does not prove a claim, made by the defense in April, that Cobb tried to reach for his service weapon — but she conceded it doesn’t disprove the evidence either. She said prosecutors did not previously know this allegation would be key to Londregan’s defense.

Moriarty also pointed to new testimony from state patrol training officials, submitted as part of the defense, that the soldier acted in accordance with his training. She said it made the case harder to prove.

Prosecutors took all that to a use-of-force expert, whose analysis led them to conclude they would lose at trial, Moriarty said. The judge might have dismissed the case without even sending it to the jury, she added.

At a fiery news conference, Londregan’s attorney, Chris Madel, said Moriarty knew from the start that Londregan would claim he used deadly force to protect himself, and had known since April that the defense would claim Cobb reached for Londregan’s firearm.

“This prosecutor was determined to prosecute an officer,” Madel said. “She couldn’t wait for a case like this to come along.” He added: “For her to now come out and say, ‘Oh my God, we had no idea the defense was hiding this amazing evidence,’ it’s just absurd.”

Londregan, who was free by his own recognition, remains on paid leave while the State Patrol reviews the shooting. Madel said Londregan plans to return to law enforcement despite the objections of some family members.

Moriarty called on the State Patrol to make several changes to reduce the use of deadly force. The troopers on the scene had better options than leaning into his car to try to free Cobb, but “wasted” their chances, she said. They could have told Cobb they intended to arrest him, instead of just ordering him out of the car. They could have just let him drive away, she said, because they knew where to find him. Or they could have put stop sticks under his car.

The State Patrol declined to respond to her recommendations. The Patrol said in a statement Sunday evening that its ability to comment was limited due to the ongoing lawsuit filed by Cobb’s family in April.

Lawyers for Cobb’s family said he was disappointed but not surprised by this outcome.

“The simple fact is that no matter how many absurd excuses Trooper Londregan gives to try to exonerate himself, he shot and killed Ricky Cobb II at point-blank range without any justification and instead of prosecuting him for murder, the District Attorney’s Office gave in to him for political pressure to drop the charges,” the family’s lawyers said in a statement.

“Apparently to get away with murder all you have to do is bully the prosecutors enough and the charges will simply go away,” the lawyers continued. “People don’t believe the excuses, and neither do we.”