Counterpoint: Moriarty's vision, not critics' fears, has been fulfilled

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When Mary Moriarty ran for Hennepin County Attorney in 2022, her opponent and other detractors were clear in stating the basis of their opposition: If Moriarty was elected, they said, crime would go up.

The critics were wrong. Crime overall (and especially violent crime) has gone down in Hennepin County and continues to go down. But instead of acknowledging that bare fact, these opponents of Mary Moriarty — including this newspaper — changed tactics. Now, they largely ignore public safety data and focus narrowly on a handful of cases in which the Moriarty administration has not sought the harsh sentences that some victims and their family members want. ("Crime victims, families protest," Oct. 12, and similar stories.)

This not only is misleading about public safety, but it fails to describe the true and longstanding relationship between prosecutors and victims of crime.

I'm not an outside observer in all of this, of course. In August I left my dream job as a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas to serve as deputy county attorney and director of the criminal division. I didn't take the job because of some longstanding friendship with Mary Moriarty; in fact, I hadn't met her until she was midway into her campaign for the office. I took it because I believed in the vision she articulated — a vision that a strong majority of voters believed in too. Those ideas rang true to me based on my own background, a personal history that includes five years as a federal prosecutor in Detroit. Moriarty's vision is rooted in the idea that we can protect public safety while reducing the length of some sentences, particularly for young people.

So far, that vision has been fulfilled.

Let's first examine that drop in violent crime, which is very real. According to the Minneapolis Police Department crime dashboard, non-negligent homicides are down over 30% compared to 2022, year-to-date. Carjacking is down 45%, while other robberies are down over 23%. While violent crime is down nationally, that trend is uneven; in contrast to Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., has seen a 41% increase in violent crime so far this year.

We shouldn't attribute the drop in crime to any one player in the system — correlation does not equal causation. I don't claim that our office lowered crime rates. However, the positive trend does disprove the original theory of Mary Moriarty's critics: That crime would spike because she won the last election. That just hasn't happened.

All of this needs to be discussed in the context of an important truth: The views, beliefs and trauma of crime victims do matter. Both the law and decency require that prosecutors making decisions hear from them, and we do. We have a competent and motivated staff of people who support all victims, and beyond that the management of the office — up to and including the county attorney — meet regularly with victims of crime and their families, including those who may not agree with decisions that have been made.

What they say matters. Often, though, we can't do what they want. For example, it isn't unusual to hear mourning family members after a murder ask us to pursue the death penalty, a punishment that hasn't been a part of Minnesota's punishment system in over a century. Other times, they want a sentence that simply doesn't fit with the norms established by our state through the sentencing guidelines. For example, victims of a robbery may want a long prison sentence. The state sentencing guidelines, though, call for a sentence with no prison time for many robberies that do not involve a weapon or result in injury.

There are times, too, when our office has gone below the guidelines or pursued a juvenile adjudication rather than an adult sentence for a youth. Those cases have been well-considered and discussed, and the victims' desires heard. But in the end, our job is to consider those views along with other things, including what is best for public safety — and sometimes a longer sentence risks stifling rehabilitation and creating a greater risk of recidivism in the end.

Intriguingly, those who argue we don't respect the wishes of victims focus only on victims who want retribution, not all victims. The truth is that many victims and victims' family members are open to a range of possible sentences. Sometimes, even, victims want no accountability or punishment at all, particularly in domestic abuse cases. Are we bound to respect their wishes, too, when they want a violent offender to walk?

Criminal law is a realm wreathed in tragedy, full of hurt people. The responsibility to address that flood of tragedy is a hard one. We prosecutors face a raw truth: That some people need to be incapacitated to protect public safety, while others do not. Discerning one from the other is a difficult task, and one we approach with humility and thoughtfulness.

One thing I learned long ago in the courtrooms of Detroit was this: If you take on the job of a prosecutor, there will always be at least one person mad at you. The job demands an inner moral compass combined with an ability to learn and change. I see that in the people I work with at the Hennepin County Attorney's Office, and I am proud to be a part of it.

Mark Osler is a deputy Hennepin County attorney and director of the criminal division.