The Minnesota Supreme Court has suspended a senior Hennepin County prosecutor placed on leave a year ago after a lie to a judge resulted in the rare decision to dismiss a rape case.

Catherine McEnroe, a 31-year lawyer who has been with the Hennepin County Attorney's Office since 2013, is suspended for 60 days and required to pay a $900 fine, the court ordered. The Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility filed for disciplinary action in the fallout of the case dismissal last January.

The court order says that McEnroe committed professional misconduct warranting public discipline for "making knowingly false statements to a court and opposing counsel during a criminal trial and engaging in dishonest conduct to cover up the false statements."

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty — within days of taking office after a landslide election — made the decision to dismiss the case and place McEnroe on leave.

Moriarty said at the time that dismissing the case was a last resort, but she stands by the decision that jolted the Twin Cities legal community. Such dismissal is extremely rare, but the teenage victim told the Star Tribune in an interview that she expects the criminal justice system to fail women.

A juror seated for the trial penned a letter to the editor, questioning Moriarty's decision and saying the unpunished rape of a teen "weighs extremely heavily in the public interest."

Binh Tuong, deputy director of the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility, said in a court stipulation that Moriarty's office had "alternatives to the dismissal, and it was not the inevitable outcome of [McEnroe]'s misconduct."

"The false statement was not substantive, there were other prosecutors who could have completed the trial (with just one professional witness remaining), and defense counsel's motion for a dismissal was still pending with the court."

In a statement Thursday, Moriarty said that the board "appears to have made assumptions of what was possible in this situation to conclude mitigating factors existed without ever asking our office about the impact of this misconduct."

"Lying to a judge and then pressuring a colleague to join efforts to cover up that lie is extremely serious," she said. "After consulting with top criminal division managers in the office, it was clear the only choice was to dismiss the case."

McEnroe and her attorney, Jeanette Bazis, declined to comment for this story.

The lie in question

While the lie was inconsequential, it was the cover up that led to the fallout.

Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill presided over the trial of a 35-year-old St. Paul man charged with first-degree criminal sexual conduct for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl in June 2019.

Moriarty said that Cahill questioned a victim advocate from Moriarty's office who passed a note to McEnroe during trial as the victim was testifying with her mother in the courtroom.

Cahill had ordered that potential witnesses be barred from the courtroom until called to testify, and he was concerned the note violated that order.

The initial note said "venue?" which Moriarty said was a reminder for McEnroe to establish that the alleged crime occurred in Hennepin County.

Moriarty said the note was not a violation or inappropriate. But McEnroe lied to Cahill about its contents.

In a short hearing under questioning by Cahill, Moriarty said McEnroe "admitted to having intentionally lied to the court."

Instead of telling Cahill the note was a venue reminder, Moriarty said that McEnroe told Cahill that the note was instead a reminder to pronounce a name correctly.

Moriarty said that McEnroe then allegedly had the victim advocate change the note to conform to the lie she told the court.

Cahill ordered the defendant be released from custody and held a separate hearing where the victim advocate testified as to what happened.

Stipulation

In a stipulation responding to the petition for disciplinary action against McEnroe, she admitted to the allegations as described in the petition.

McEnroe entered the stipulation in October, agreeing to the 60-day suspension effective as of Thursday's court order.

The disciplinary decision was based on comparable cases, though Tuong wrote in the stipulation memo that she couldn't find any Minnesota cases "exactly on point" with McEnroe's misconduct.

"While this case concerns misconduct that occurred in a single case," Tuong wrote, "it involved two separate instances of dishonesty (making a false statement to the court and then inducing another to write a new note and submitting it to cover up the false statement.)"

Tuong wrote that McEnroe "has demonstrated deep remorse and has taken full accountability for her actions" and "recognizes the harm she caused to the victim, the court, and the justice system and places full responsibility on herself."

McEnroe "was facing extreme stress in her personal life with the death of her former spouse in 2020 and solely caring for a now-adult special needs son," Tuong said.

She was formerly married to Paul McEnroe, a longtime Star Tribune reporter who died in 2020 after a battle with cancer. He was 69.

Tuong also cited McEnroe's unaddressed trauma from her work as a prosecutor, particularly working with child rape victims, and workload stress.

"While extreme stress would normally not mitigate dishonest conduct, in this case it was a factor giving rise to the misconduct. [McEnroe] has since sought help from a mental health professional and is seeking treatment to address these issues. [McEnroe] has reflected on her conduct, recognizes the root cause of it and has taken steps to address the underlying issue."

Yet, Tuong said that McEnroe's false statement "had no bearing on the case, nor did it have substantive value. Indeed, [McEnroe] cannot explain why she made the false statement, other than to reflect on the extreme pressure she was facing at the time."

Tuong said the misconduct resulted in a dismissal on the motion of the Hennepin County Attorney's Office.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the official from the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility who wrote the stipulation and suspension decision. Director Susan Humiston recused herself from McEnroe's case, and deputy director Binh Tuong oversaw it instead.