No death penalty in Minnesota, but worries about prosecutorial conduct nonetheless

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On Tuesday night, over the objections of the St. Louis prosecutor and the victim’s family, the state of Missouri executed Marcellus Williams. Remarkably, prosecutors in this case admitted wrongdoing, including multiple violations of Williams’ constitutional rights. Nevertheless, he was put to death.

In Minnesota, we don’t have the death penalty, but that does not leave prosecutors off the hook. I just finished reading the entire 180-page report produced by the Minnesota Conviction Review Unit on the wrongful conviction of Edgar Barrientos-Quintana (tinyurl.com/review-ebq). I’m compelled to share a snippet that took my breath away.

Buried in footnote 779 was a reference citing statements by (now retired) Minneapolis Police Department Homicide Sgt. Bob Dale: “He said he had no problem with the fact that sometimes police and prosecutors have to let guilty people get away with murder in order to convict someone of the crime.”

I’m just going to say it as clearly as I can: I have a huge problem with that.

As a former Hennepin County prosecutor, I remember the day I raised my hand and swore an oath to support the U.S. and Minnesota Constitutions. It was a big deal. I did not consider myself an ordinary lawyer. Instead, I was a lawyer representing the people of Hennepin County, tasked with doing the right thing every single day.

I did not envy my colleagues on the gang team. Those cases were challenging on so many levels, and maybe that’s why the team appeared insulated, with its prosecutors placed on pedestals and rewarded when they obtained convictions.

Having the benefit of hindsight, along with the report’s very straightforward rendering of the facts and timeline for the investigation and subsequent prosecution, I wonder how much pressure was brought to bear by the presence of a camera crew from “The First 48,” a television reality show. Regardless, as prosecutors, we must hold ourselves to a standard higher than convicting “someone” of a crime.

I also can’t tell from the report why investigators initially abandoned a bald suspect whom witnesses were identifying. But the efforts to focus instead on a person who was not bald and who had a plausible alibi are quite shocking. It seems my former colleagues recognized this in correspondence with the detectives, but ultimately took great pains to allow the bald guy a pass on prosecution.

I’m not going to repeat all the discovery and Brady rule violations identified by the CRU, but they’re all laid out in stark terms. (The Brady rule requires prosecutors to disclose exculpatory information to the defense.) I can’t help thinking that better defense attorneys and a judge more familiar with the protections afforded defendants in the criminal justice system might have created a better outcome for Barrientos-Quintana. But that’s not even close to the point.

As someone who spent a year as an assistant Ramsey County public defender through an exchange program, I learned that when all parties are playing by the rules and performing at an adequate level, the system works. Sadly, the numbers of unqualified, unethical or simply lazy lawyers are greater than I’d ever imagined.

While I wholeheartedly support the Conviction Review Unit in the Attorney General’s Office, I think the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office would be better served by investing resources in more robust training and mentoring, rather than standing up a unit that parallels one already in existence. In the four years since I’ve been out of the County Attorney’s Office, I’ve continued to see decisions and actions that fly in the face of the oath we all swore to uphold. The office should focus its efforts on figuring out why this happens. From my experience, the fear of being wrong — along with a culture that does not value mentoring and training — makes for an environment that’s not always conducive to doing the right thing.

I was fortunate; I never had a case in which I even suspected that I was prosecuting the wrong person. Denial is common among offenders, but prosecutors must remember the burden of proof is beyond a reasonable doubt. Another passage from the CRU report saddens me: “In short, the state presented the eyewitness descriptions of the shooter in a manner inconsistent with the evidence and failed to correct the record. Without these representations, there is a reasonable probability the jury would have acquitted Barrientos.”

Only my former colleagues can answer the question of why they pursued the wrong person. Buying into Sgt. Dale’s philosophy is not the correct one.

Deborah Russell, of Clear Lake, Minn., is a retired assistant Hennepin County attorney.