Media coalition fights for immediate access to evidence in trooper’s deadly force case

A coalition of Minnesota media companies is asking a judge not to enforce “draconian restrictions” limiting public access to court filings in the murder case against Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan, saying that it would violate press freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution’s First Amendment.

The court motion, filed by media attorney Leita Walker on Friday, comes one week after Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty sought to seal filings in the case for two business days so lawyers could review them first.

Normally, these court documents become available to the press and general public promptly after being filed with the court. Yet, Moriarty’s office cited the need to “prevent confidential, inadmissible, or prejudicial information from improperly being made public,” when requesting that Judge Tamara Garcia institute a “screening period” that would allow attorneys from both sides to ensure that the records don’t contain private information.

“We are concerned the initial pretrial publicity initiated by the defense will impact the ability for Mr. Londregan to receive a fair trial, if it continues,” county attorney spokesman Nicholas Kimball said last week.

Londregan is charged with second-degree unintentional murder, first-degree assault and second-degree manslaughter in the fatal shooting of Ricky Cobb II at a traffic stop last July 31. His attorney Chris Madel has called Londregan a “hero” who is “100 percent innocent.”

In her response Friday, Walker challenged prosecutors’ motivation for such an “overbroad sealing request,” arguing that they failed to provide any evidence that such a move was necessary. Pretrial proceedings, such as suppression hearings to weigh whether certain evidence is admissible at trial, are presumptively open to the public — and frequently covered by the media, according to the 18-page motion.

“Simply put, the State has offered no explanation why this case is any different than the many criminal cases, including those with law enforcement defendants that have come before it,” Walker wrote. “If anything, there has been considerably less pretrial publicity in this matter than those high-profile cases ... in which no draconian restrictions like those the State seeks here were imposed.”

She pointed to the prosecutions of several other Twin Cities police officers for deadly use of force cases in recent years, including: Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd; Mohamed Noor for the killing of Justine Ruszczyk Damond; Kim Potter for the manslaughter of Daunte Wright; and Jeronimo Yanez, who was acquitted in the manslaughter of Philando Castile.

“Each of those cases involved extensive pretrial media coverage, and still each managed to empanel a fair, impartial, and untainted jury pool, which subsequently returned unbiased verdicts in those cases,” Walker continued. “In fact, in the joint federal criminal trials of Chauvin’s co-defendants Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane — and despite pretrial publicity far exceeding what the Defendant here faces — District of Minnesota Judge Paul Magnuson was able to conduct and conclude voir dire and empanel an impartial jury all in a matter of one day.”

The media coalition signing on to Friday’s motion includes the Star Tribune, American Public Media Group, which owns MPR, the Associated Press, CBS News, KARE 11, WCCO TV, KSTP TV and other Hubbard Broadcasting Inc. properties.

Madel, who also opposes Moriarty’s request to seal records, filed a lengthy motion Friday chastising her office for attempting to “manufacture a prejudicial and false media narrative” about Londregan before the trial even began.

“Make no mistake: the State’s motions are designed to conceal the weakness of its case,” he wrote, alleging that the protective order was designed to “shield the Hennepin County Attorney from public criticism and to artificially preserve the State’s rapidly disintegrating narrative.”

In his own letter to the court, Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Joshua Larson defended the state’s motion, arguing that a two-day waiting period “protects the parties from potential misuse of the public electronic-filing system to disseminate confidential, inadmissible, or prejudicial information.”

”By filing this motion, the State is not asking the Court to infringe on first-amendment rights of the press or public,” Larson wrote. “The State also is not seeking to quell the defense’s right to raise meritorious claims. ... Rather, the State is asking the Court to address the practical reality that, if a party cannot disseminate certain information, e.g., grand jury testimony, directly to the public, there should be some constraint on that party from using the public electronic-filing system as a conduit to do the exact same thing.”

A hearing has been requested to rule on the matter.

This is the latest occurrence of local new outlets seeking to intervene in a criminal court case to fight for greater access to the trial. The media coalition formed amid the high-profile 2019 Noor trial following Judge Kathryn Quaintance’s initial ruling barring the public from viewing key body camera footage in the courtroom along with the jury. She later reversed course.

State prosecutors trying Chauvin’s 2020 case proposed a similar motion that would have instituted a 48-hour seal on all court filings. Judge Peter Cahill summarily denied that request, following fierce resistance by the media coalition.

On Tuesday, in response to an “acrimonious” exchange between Londregan’s attorneys and prosecutors, Garcia instructed the parties not to attach any exhibits to motions they file and instead bring them to future hearings for consideration.

In its motion, the media coalition cautioned that her order was troubling because it could provide an opening for the attorneys to “cherry-pick from the evidence what they find most helpful,” without allowing the unrestricted access to judge what it actually shows.

“Indeed, such gamesmanship by the parties risks tainting the jury pool to a greater degree than would full disclosure of whatever they are citing,” Walker wrote.

Star Tribune staff writer Andy Mannix contributed to this story.