Mary Moriarty, a former public defender, became Minneapolis’ top prosecutor last year after convincing voters shocked by the killing of George Floyd that she could improve public safety by curbing police misconduct and making the criminal justice system less punitive.
Turmoil quickly followed. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a fellow Democrat who had supported Ms. Moriarty as she ran for Hennepin County district attorney, took over a murder case from her office last spring after concluding she had offered too lenient a deal to a minor defendant.
By fall, two judges took the unusual step of rejecting plea deals offered by Ms. Moriarty’s office, deeming them too permissive for violent crimes.
After Ms. Moriarty this year charged a state trooper with manslaughter in the shooting of a hit-and-run driver during a traffic stop, criticism mounted.
Several law enforcement officials have questioned the strength of the evidence in the case, and Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, as well as members of Congress from both parties, have expressed concern about the prosecution.
“Mary Moriarty did a very positive thing,” said Chris Mandel, an attorney representing Ryan Lodregan, the state trooper awaiting trial in the death of Ricky Cobb II. “He’s brought bipartisanship back to Minnesota, as people on both the left and the right agree he’s doing a terrific job.”
Ms Moriarty is one of a handful of left-wing prosecutors elected in recent years promising to overhaul justice systems by jailing fewer people, holding police accountable for misconduct and reducing racial disparities. Some met stiff resistance as they pushed to limit cash bail requirements and sought less severe sentences for certain types of crimes to reduce prison populations.
In 2022, voters in San Francisco recalled Chesa Boudin, the district attorney, as residents grew angry over property crimes and street drug dealing. In St. Louis, Kimberly Gardner, the district attorney-elect, resigned last year after a tumultuous tenure. But voters have sometimes stuck by prosecutors, even as police unions, elected officials and others have rallied against them. An effort by Pennsylvania lawmakers to oust Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney, failed, and a recall bid by George Gascon, the Los Angeles County district attorney, failed.
In Minneapolis, the prosecution of Trooper Londregan in the coming months will be a new test of public sentiment in the city that sparked a national outcry over racism and police misconduct after Mr. Floyd’s slaying at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in 2020.
In an interview, Ms Moriarty, 60, said she was under no illusions that the vision she campaigned for would be easy to achieve. But the intensity of the pushback he’s seen has been terrifying, he said.
“I really find it hard to believe that we are in the city where George Floyd happened,” he said. “It’s very easy to scare people with crime. It’s a tactic people have been using forever and it’s starting to work again.”
Ms. Moriarty began learning about the law as a child while driving near their home in rural northern Minnesota with her father, a criminal judge who played tapes of lectures on the rules of evidence. After college, Ms. Moriarty worked briefly as a journalist before earning a law degree from the University of Minnesota.
Kevin S. Burke, a former chief district judge who hired Ms. Moriarty as a lawyer, described her as a talented lawyer who had a knack for nailing opening statements and closing arguments.
Rising through the ranks of the Hennepin County public defender’s office, Ms. Moriarty showed a creative streak. Once, he hired a local theater actor to teach lawyers how to connect with juries and turn legal theories into compelling narratives.
Representing defendants for decades convinced Ms. Moriarty that the justice system was primed for punishment, offering very rare tools to help people turn their lives around.
“My observation about some of the prosecutors here was that someone called the perpetrator and someone called the victim, and the victim was supposed to be stereotypically virginal, and there was never any crossover,” he said. Her cases reflected a more nuanced reality, she said, including defendants who had been crime victims themselves.
In 2014, Ms. Moriarty became the first woman to lead the Hennepin County Public Defender’s Office. He has received accolades for going above and beyond ordinary criminal defense, helping clients find employment, housing and medical care.
Her last year as solicitor general was difficult. In late 2019, the Minnesota Board of Public Defender suspended her and launched an investigation into her management style, citing an allegation by an employee that she had created a “culture of fear.”
Ms Moriarty disputed that characterization and recalled the period as traumatic. She said she believed the investigation was motivated by sexism, her efforts to get raises for her staff and a tense exchange she had with a prosecutor over the use of the word “bum.”
Ms Moriarty was reinstated but left after it became clear the board would not retain her when her term expired. He walked away with a $300,000 settlement in which he agreed not to work as a public defender in Minnesota.
In late 2021, Ms. Moriarty launched a campaign to replace the outgoing county attorney general, building a platform that supporters saw as a response to the outrage that followed the killing of George Floyd. He promised to create a unit to hold “officers accountable when they break trust and commit crimes” and steer more juvenile offenders into treatment alternatives to prison.
In 2022, Ms. Moriarty easily defeated a more conservative opponent: a retired judge and former prosecutor who received the endorsement of the local newspaper and law enforcement unions.
Immediately after she took office, critics appeared. Relatives of the victims expressed dismay at the deals offered to juveniles accused of violent crimes.
Susan Markey’s brother, Steven, was fatally shot during a carjacking in 2019. Husayn Braveheart, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, has been charged with murder.
After a judge rejected a deal offered by Ms. Moriarty’s office that would have spared the teenager jail time, Ms. Moriarty allowed Mr. Braveheart to plead guilty to attempted first-degree assault, a lesser crime, arguing that he had “ he made huge strides’ and responded well to treatment.
Ms. Markey called the outcome highly inappropriate and said Ms. Moriarty continued to act as a public defender.
“He became a prosecutor, but he continues to use the same tactics and espouse the same views,” said Ms. Markey, who is a lawyer. “She is a political idealist who does not respond to outside comments or events that do not align with her perspective.”
Last spring, Mr. Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, took over Ms. Moriarty’s office for prosecuting a case in which Zaria McKeever, the mother of a girl, was fatally shot in her suburban Minneapolis home. Authorities said Ms McKeever was targeted by an ex-boyfriend, who recruited two teenagers to carry out the shooting.
Ms Moriarty intended to send one of the teenagers, Foday Kevin Kamara, who was 15 at the time of the shooting, to a two-year rehabilitation program for juvenile offenders. But Ms. McKeever’s relatives considered the punishment too lenient and objected, and Mr. Ellison received the governor’s permission to take the case. The teenager, now 17, has since pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and prosecutors say they will try to keep him in prison until he is 23.
Now questions have been raised about Ms Moriarty’s decision this year to charge Trooper Lodregan with second degree murder.
In July, state troopers pulled over a vehicle Mr. Cobb was driving along Interstate 94 in Minneapolis. During the stop for driving without tail lights working, troopers learned that Mr. Cobb was under arrest on suspicion of violating a restraining order involving a former romantic partner, officials said.
Body camera footage captured Trooper Lodregan, who is white, and another trooper entering the vehicle in an attempt to take Mr. Cobb, a 33-year-old black man, into custody. Almost immediately, Mr. Cobb’s vehicle was seen to lurch forward and Trooper Londregan fired his weapon twice. The troopers fell to the ground and the car sped away before stopping a quarter of a mile away. Mr Cobb, who was shot in the torso, died at the scene.
Mr Madel, lawyer for Trooper Londregan, said the trooper believed he and his partner were in danger of serious injury or death when he fired his weapon, making the officer’s use of force legal.
Court filings show Ms. Moriarty’s office retained an expert on police use of force but stopped working with him after the expert, based on preliminary evidence, suggested the trooper may have acted legally.
Ms Moriarty said the allegations against Private Lodregan were justified. He added that he decided an expert on the use of force was not needed after prosecutors concluded that the soldiers had acted in a way that was contrary to their training for such situations.
Marvina Haynes, who heads an advocacy organization fighting wrongful convictions, said the prosecution of Trooper Londregan sent a strong message. “It’s critical that we let law enforcement know that this is not the Wild West and that this is not an open battlefield,” he said.
The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association issued a statement calling the case a “wrongful prosecution” and urged the governor to reassign it to the attorney general. Governor Walz said he too had concerns. Six of Minnesota’s eight representatives in the House of Representatives — including two Democrats — criticized the prosecution.
Brian O’Hara, chief of the Minneapolis Police Department, said the case had solidified the view many police officers had long held of Ms. Moriarty.
“They already thought he was going to overcharge a cop and charge someone who is out there committing a violent crime,” said Chief O’Hara, who admitted he had a strained relationship with the attorney general. “All the cops are talking about it.”
T. Anansi Wilson, a Mitchell Hamline Law School professor who directs the Center for the Study of Black Lives and the Law, said he was skeptical when he first heard Ms. Moriarty talk about criminal justice reform as a candidate.
But he said he had grown to admire her determination to follow her conscience, even as backlash mounted.
“This is the first time in our lives that we’ve ever had prosecutors willing to say, ‘What about all the people I put in jail?’ he said. “They’ve taken Black Lives Matter and made it happen.”
