Two years after publicly promising to do better, Ramsey County prosecutors are reviewing more sexual assault cases and filing more charges, County Attorney John Choi said Tuesday.
Ramsey County prosecutors filed charges in 150 adult sex assault cases in 2020 — up from 99 in 2017 — and charged about half of cases reviewed last year compared with 43% in 2017.
"We are slowly showing some real progress," Choi said. "There is still a lot more that needs to happen, but we are certainly on the right track."
Choi and police partners shared new investigative strategies and fresh data with the Ramsey County Board on Tuesday. They outlined a series of changes including better police training; more dedicated sex crimes investigators in St. Paul and the suburbs; more support for survivors; and better collaboration between police and prosecutors.
Choi cautioned the early data capture just the first full year of work — a year impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"As we think about justice, it's not like a basketball game," he said. "But numbers can help us understand the trends and the health of the response."
In spring 2019, Choi and leaders from nine police agencies, including St. Paul, Maplewood, Roseville and the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office, signed the "Sexual Assault Response Collaboration" agreement, after a county attorney's office analysis of sex crimes investigations revealed a gap at every level of the criminal justice system, Choi said. Victims were hesitant to report crimes, fearing they would not be believed, police questioned whether prosecutors would pursue charges and prosecutors wondered if it would be too difficult to persuade jurors to convict.
One troubling finding: Two-thirds of cases reported to police never made it to the prosecutor's office for review, Choi said.
