A lawyer has explained what must happen next in the courts as prosecutors continue to seek justice for Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
The two civilians were shot and killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents earlier this year, with state officials "at a loss as to how to proceed", according to legal expert Chris Truax. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, he says, is struggling to bring an "apparently stymied" Bureau of Criminal Apprehension into the fold, while crime scene access has been flatly denied.
This causes a logjam which the court must now solve by taking a tough line against the government, Truax told The Hill. He wrote, "In the vast majority of these incidents, there is never any question what happened. The only questions are about why it happened and whether the officer behaved reasonably under the circumstances."
"We’re not going to get that in the Renee Good and Alex Pretti shootings. Kristi Noem’s ridiculous insistence that the victims in both cases were 'domestic terrorists' makes a credible federal investigation impossible. That’s assuming that the federal government and the Department of Homeland Security have any interest in conducting a proper investigation, which they do not appear to.
"In short, no one will now believe any federal investigation has been conducted fairly, especially if it exonerates those involved. That’s as much a shame for the officers themselves as it is for the country."
But there is a route through that the courts must now take, according to Truax. He wrote, "So if there are going to be credible investigations in these cases, they are going to have to be conducted by state prosecutors, and they are going to have to do it without federal cooperation and without any of the evidence that is typically available in an officer-involved shooting.
"In both the Renee Good and Alex Pretti shootings, state prosecutors already have the testimony of multiple eyewitnesses and corroborating video available. Body camera footage and cooperation from the federal government would be nice, but it’s hardly necessary. The evidence that’s already available documents the entire incident, from the minutes leading up to the shooting all the way through the aftermath."
"This is not to say that a prosecution will be easy or that there are no difficult issues to be resolved. But these issues are legal issues — like whether supremacy clause immunity will apply — not factual. They won’t be resolved by investigation, they’ll be resolved by litigation. The sooner that process starts, the better."
Truax went on to say Minnesota "must step up" and push back against the government rhetoric that has existed over the last seven weeks.