University of Minnesota Law School alum Daniel Rosen, Image via Screengrab.
The Department of Justice has “suffered a string of embarrassing defeats” in court as federal government cases against people accused of “physically attacking officers or interfering with their duties … have recently been dismissed or ended in not guilty verdicts,” the Guardian reports.
After President Donald Trump surged federal agents in Minnesota, a number of cases in the Minneapolis-St. Paul region revealed a gulf between federal agent’s claims and the actual facts on the ground, often backed by video of the events.
Frederick Goetz, a lawyer for a man charged with felony assault for allegedly attacking an officer, and whose charges were later dismissed by prosecutors, told the Guardian he sees “a pattern” among similar cases in the region.
“There are unreasonable uses of force by ICE agents and border patrol,” Goetz explained. “You immediately have stories perpetuated to justify that force: ‘The officer was being attacked. This was an ambush.’ All of that spin is to cast the victims as violent perpetrators. Then the story falls apart once you get the facts.”
In Goetz's client's case, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) director Todd Lyons last week acknowledged “sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements.” Lyons insisted federal authorities are investigating the officers.
As the Guardian reports, several other cases in Minnesota have “fallen apart” under the facts.
“Earlier this year, Minnesota federal prosecutors dropped assault charges against a man, who was accused of ramming his car into agents during an immigration operation,” the Guardian reports. “The DOJ presented no witnesses to establish probable cause.”
And on Tuesday, Judge Donovan Frank “dismissed with prejudice federal assault charges filed against a Minneapolis man accused of ‘tackling’ an ICE agent,” calling the “allegations ‘vague and contradictory.’”
The DOJ’s inability to secure convictions in these cases come as “the number of assistant U.S. attorneys in Minnesota has fallen from more than 40 prosecutors before Trump retook office to fewer than two dozen,” the AP reports.
Minnesota, according to the AP, “has been hit especially hard” by a slew of resignations across the United States. Because of this, “a growing number of defendants are beginning to escape accountability, as the remaining prosecutors are forced to dismiss some cases, kill others before charges are filed and seek plea agreements and delays.”
“Public safety has not been served by these rash of cases,” Goetz told the Guardian.
In one such case, 12-time convicted felon Cory Allen McKay, “with a three-decade record of violent crime that includes strangling a pregnant woman and firing a shotgun under a person’s chin … walked free after the prosecutor on his case retired,” the AP reports.
According to the report, McKay’s lawyer, Jean Brand, said the move was “completely surprising” to her. She didn’t learn that Trump appointee Daniel Rosen abruptly dropped the case until after her client’s release.
Last year, former assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Hollenhorst successfully argued that McKay “was too dangerous to be released before trial,” the AP reports.
McKay’s lawyer called Hollenhorst’s retired “a huge loss’ for the Justice Department, despite the win for her client.