Hate crime charge dropped in verbal, physical attack on Black man at Belle Plaine bar

Prosecutors have dropped federal hate crime charges against a white man accused of a vicious attack on a Black man outside a Belle Plaine bar, while a felony assault case in Scott County remains unaffected.

Justin A. Kudla, 36, of Belle Plaine, was charged in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis in January with interference with federally protected activities and committing a hate crime in connection with the attack outside Huck’s Shipwreck Saloon in the early morning hours of Feb. 3, 2024. A trial was scheduled to begin Monday.

The beating left 36-year-old Benjamin Morelock unconscious and suffering from life-threatening injuries, including bleeding on the brain and fractures to an eye socket and his skull.

On Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Evan Gilead explained in a court filing that “in light of newly discovered evidence, which recently came to the government’s attention, the government has determined that the indictment should be dismissed in the interest of justice because the newly discovered evidence affects the government’s ability to prove the specific-intent element essential to the pending federal hate crime charges.”

Gilead’s motion, which the court granted, shed no light on what the new evidence entailed. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to say anything beyond what was in the motion. The Minnesota Star Tribune has reached out to Morelock for comment.

Briefly unresolved was whether the case would be dismissed by Judge Kate Menendez “without prejudice,” leaving open the possibility that the charges could have been refiled, or “with prejudice,” meaning Kudla could not be charged anew on the same allegations.

The prosecution, which initially sought to keep the refiling option alive, notified the court late Thursday that it agreed with defense attorney Lisa Lopez’s to have the case closed for good.

Also, Gilead continued, “Kudla’s racial harassment of [Morelock] started long before the night of the assault. ... Just a few weeks before the assault, Mr. Kudla debased [Morelock] with racial slurs such that two people told him to stop. He did so again on the day of the assault.”

The prosecutor also alleged in the Sept. 8 filing that Kudla previously “shouted racial slurs at Black pedestrians while riding in a car” and carried out other racially charged verbal assaults targeting Black people.

Lopez described to the Star Tribune a far different person from what prosecutors portrayed and added that she is confident that she could have refuted those allegations during cross-examination if there were a trial.

“It was absolutely overcharged,” she said. “It should have remained just a Scott County assault case.”

Lopez noted that Kudla has no affiliation or even affinity for white supremacy and what it stands for.

Lopez pointed to a 2012 Facebook post, which she filed with the court two weeks ago, that includes him celebrating the re-election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first Black president and claiming he is part Black and has Black relatives.

Kudla was charged earlier in Scott County District Court with first-degree assault in connection with the attack on Morelock. A hearing in that case is scheduled for Oct. 28.

Assistant Scott County Attorney Debra Lund said Friday that the developments in the federal case ,“does not change anything in our prosecution of him. The assigned prosecutor previously filed a ... motion to increase the sentence if he is found guilty.”

State court records show Kudla’s criminal history also includes two convictions each for terroristic threats and stalking, and one each for a felony-level violation of a no-contact order and trespassing.

According to the Scott County charges:

Morelock was helped to his home nearby.

Two days later, the Huck’s employee went to Morelock’s home and found him in bed and going in and out of consciousness. She took him to a nearby hospital before he was transferred to Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

A woman who works at Neisen’s Red Door Bar in Belle Plaine described Morelock as “a wonderful person, and [Kudla] as very mean when he drinks,” the criminal complaint read.