Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said Wednesday that with or without federal cooperation, state prosecutors and law enforcement have gathered enough evidence to consider charging decisions against the federal agents who shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
While noting that her office still lacks crucial evidence taken by the federal government, including the gun reportedly taken off Pretti before he was shot and the car Good was driving when she was shot, Moriarty said at a news conference on Feb. 18 that a trove of investigative materials remains available to state law enforcement. She said prosecutors are in “good shape” as they consider what would be an unprecedented decision to file state charges against federal agents without the help of the federal government.
“These cases, there’s no mystery about how these people died, right?” Moriarty said. “They were shot to death.”
In announcing that her office had sent additional Touhy letters to the federal government — the letters represent the formal demand and process for obtaining records and evidence from federal agencies — Moriarty said state investigations into the killings by her office, the Minnesota Attorney General and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension continue.
“The BCA never stopped investigating,” Moriarty said. “There’s plenty of information out there. We’ve gotten over a thousand submissions to our portals and the BCA has also been interviewing witnesses.”
Those portals were launched after the federal government broke with longstanding tradition and told state law enforcement there would be no joint investigation into the deadly use of force by their agents on the streets of Minneapolis. The portals provided an avenue for citizens to submit relevant evidence to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. Moriarty said a team on her staff has been reviewing the submissions
“None of what is happening with the federal government has stopped the BCA and our office from working together on gathering as much information as we possibly can,” Moriarty said. “Of course we would like to have access to whatever it is that the feds have, but I have said this repeatedly: we know some of the things they took.”
Moriarty said she doesn’t know what the charging decisions will be against the federal agents involved in the shootings, but “it certainly would be much easier if the federal government were not hiding evidence from us and obstructing our ability to do the investigation.”
