Tolkkinen: Thumbs up for Detroit Lakes jury in Sen. Nicole Mitchell burglary case

I’ve long been baffled by support among Minnesota liberals for Nicole Mitchell, the DFL state senator who broke into her stepmother’s Detroit Lakes home in 2024.

While burglary charges hung over not only her head, but also over her party and the Minnesota legislative session, she finished her 2024 term and served the full 2025 term.

Apparently, Democrats could not bring themselves to push her out the way the state’s Republicans swiftly forced out Rep. Justin Eichorn after he was caught in a law enforcement sting involving underage sex trafficking.

A creepy business that Eichorn is accused of, no question, but there wasn’t even a real victim in that case, just a police investigator pretending to be 17.

In Mitchell’s case, a living, breathing human being was victimized: her aging, recently widowed stepmother who was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

From liberals, I heard nary a sympathetic word for her stepmother, Carol Mitchell, who is now 75. There was a collective and partisan failure of imagination and caring for this vulnerable woman who was home alone and woke in the dark of night, got out of bed, and stumbled into another human being.

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine getting out of bed in the dark and stepping not on carpet or hardwood, but onto a human body?

Yet fellow lawmakers hugged Sen. Mitchell when she returned to work following her arrest, and party leaders failed to immediately push her to resign. And whenever I discussed the case with lefties both rural and urban, I heard versions of the same sentiments:

It was a family dispute, nothing law enforcement should have gotten involved in.

She had recently lost her father, and people react to grief in strange ways and do things they might not otherwise do.

It was her family home! It’s not like she broke into a stranger’s house.

All those are no doubt true. But relationships do not allow us to perpetrate crimes on family members, even in houses in which we live full time. Family members are routinely prosecuted for crimes that take place inside the home, including domestic violence, elder abuse, and child neglect and abuse. Burglary is no different.

I’m not here to litigate the case. Nicole Mitchell’s trial took place last week, and on Friday, a Becker County jury found her guilty of first-degree burglary and felony possession of burglary tools.

I’m here to lament the partisanship that prevented good, kind people from admitting that one of their own screwed up, that one of their own inflicted emotional scars on a vulnerable, elderly woman. The older Mitchell testified in court that she moved into a high-security building until she could have a security system installed in her home.

“I didn’t dare stay there,” she testified.

In 2024, Democratic legislative leaders, bathing in hypocrisy, defended Sen. Mitchell during the session; they needed her vote in the narrowly divided Senate. It wasn’t until after the session that they urged her to resign, which she chose not to do. Even now, following her conviction, she is hanging onto the remnants of power, saying she will resign within two weeks.

Defending their own isn’t solely a Democratic problem. Republicans do the same. So does MAGA. It’s a problem whenever our loyalties outweigh our sense of justice. For months, state Republicans have been crowing about how they ousted Eichorn while Democrats let Mitchell stay in office. And yes, good job, GOP! You did well. But what about the president pardoning the Jan. 6 protesters, including those who attacked police officers, vandalized the U.S. Capitol, and tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power?

We all need to look in the mirror.

Mitchell is not a career criminal. She has accomplished a great deal in her lifetime. She’s a lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard and worked as a meteorologist before getting elected to represent Woodbury and Maplewood. She’s 50, not a great age to start over, but I would bet she’ll find some meaningful work.

But she needs to look in the mirror, too. She pleaded not guilty to the charges, and maybe she still thinks there was nothing wrong with her actions.

Unfortunately, justifying their actions is common among those convicted of crimes.

Let’s hope she uses her time in the wilderness for authentic self-reflection.