Decision on Charging Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s Killers Looms Over Minneapolis DA Race

Por Matt Sledge — The Intercept

Cedrick Frazier’s blunt message for Minneapolis voters practically jumps off his yard signs: “PROSECUTE ICE. VOTE FRAZIER.”

The slogan reflects the city’s deep anger over the killing of two U.S. citizens by federal officers in January. It also reflects Frazier’s belief that the backlash gives him the edge in the race to serve as Minneapolis’s top prosecutor.

Frazier, a public defender turned state representative, is vying with former federal prosecutor Anders Folk in the race to become Hennepin County Attorney. The county, which includes Minneapolis, was beset by violence and chaos this winter amid a Trump administration immigration crackdown known as “Operation Metro Surge.”

Before the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, the contest was shaping up as a referendum on so-called progressive prosecutions — fallout from a debate that began six years ago after George Floyd was murdered by former police officer Derek Chauvin.

Now it has morphed into something more. Either Frazier or his opponent will likely decide whether to prosecute the federal immigration agents who killed Good and Pretti. Those stakes give the race national implications, Hamline University political science professor David Schultz said.

“People are going to be looking at this race and asking: What does it tell us about holding law enforcement accountable?” he said. “If you hadn’t had Metro Surge, if you hadn’t had George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, it would be: Minneapolis is holding an election for county attorney — no big deal.”

Walking the Block

A county attorney in Minnesota has broad responsibilities that range from general counsel for local government to prosecuting crimes to pursuing child support cases.

Voters, however, only wanted to talk about one thing as Frazier canvassed the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis earlier this month: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s winter invasion. Without prompting, two voters in two blocks thanked him for his campaign promise to go after ICE.

The reminders of Minneapolis’s turbulent decade are everywhere in the city. A couple blocks away from a campaign field office, one building is still tagged with “#JUSTICE4GEORGE” graffiti. Within a short drive, the memorials for Good and Pretti are overflowing with flowers and handwritten tributes.

In an interview with The Intercept, Frazier was careful to say that he has not made any decisions about cases involving federal agents. Any explicit statement to that effect could be used to throw him off the case.

“But I don’t see it any different than saying we’re going to go after crime,” Frazier said. “We’re just making it very clear and very explicit that if you come here, regardless of what your title is, and if you violate the law here, there will be accountability for that.”

A native of the South Side of Chicago, Frazier moved to rural Minnesota for college and never left the state. He has three daughters and went from serving as a Hennepin County public defender to state representative for New Hope, a suburb of Minneapolis.

The 47-year-old built strong connections with the state affiliate of the Democratic Party and Minnesota’s powerful labor movement. His day job outside of his part-time legislative position is as an attorney for the state’s main teacher union.

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If he is elected, Frazier will likely face crucial decisions about whether to file or continue pursuing charges in the Good and Pretti killers. The sitting county attorney, Mary Moriarty, began the investigation into those killings with the aid of state Attorney General Keith Ellison, but she could leave the ultimate charging decision up to her successor. Frazier says he has no confidence in parallel federal investigations.

“I have no trust whatsoever in a Donald Trump-led Department of Justice actually getting us any justice or accountability for what happened here,” he said.

“Tagged With Trump”

His opponent, Folk, brings a strikingly different resume and support base to the race.

A Minnesota native and 49-year-old first-time candidate who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, he worked his way up through the ranks at the U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis, where some of his most notable early cases focused on Somali American men accused of traveling to the Horn of Africa to fight for the designated terror group al-Shabaab.

After a stint at a national law firm, he returned to the U.S. attorney’s office in 2018 to serve as first assistant. He was briefly the interim top prosecutor after the resignation of the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in 2021. During that stint, he signed Chauvin’s indictment on federal civil rights charges connected to the murder of George Floyd.

In 2022, he left public service and became a partner at the white-shoe law firm Jones Day, which has helped corporations fight union campaigns.

His blue-chip resume attracted support from wealthy campaign donors and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who endorsed him early on.

Folk, whose campaign declined a request for an interview, leans on his prosecutorial experience to make the case that he is best suited to prosecute federal officers.

“These are cases we’ve never done here in Minnesota,” he said in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio last month. “These are going to be cases we’re doing for the first time in the history of this state. And I think it just really speaks to how critical it is to have that deep experience doing federal criminal prosecution work because that’s where these cases are all going to end up.”

While campaigning on his experience at the U.S. attorney’s office, however, his job as a federal prosecutor also presents a liability. Frazier routinely notes that Folk rejoined the office when Trump was president. That association has hurt Folk as much as anything else, said Schultz, the Hamline law and politics professor.

“He is tagged with Trump, he is tagged with the federal prosecutor’s office,” Schultz said.

“It’s guilt by association.”

Mary Moriarty’s Shadow

Frazier took 36 percent of the vote in the nonpartisan primary last month to Folk’s 23 percent. That lead makes him the “heavy” favorite but not the inevitable winner, Schultz said.

Folk’s supporters have bristled at the claims that he was a Trump lackey. In the run-off, Folk played up his connections to the Biden administration.

Yet Folk has played the guilt-by-association game, too, by tying Frazier to the current county attorney, Mary Moriarty.

Moriarty ran as an outspoken progressive when voters were outraged over her predecessor’s handling of Floyd’s murder. She promised to transform the office with a restorative approach and fresh reviews of past incidents of police brutality.

She followed through on those pledges but drew political flak for the way in which she went about it.

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Former Democratic allies, including state Attorney General Keith Ellison, castigated her over her handling of a case where two teen boys were accused in the killing a young mother and she sought to prosecute them as juveniles. Democratic Gov. Tim Walz eventually took her off the case and handed it to Ellison, a move she called undemocratic.

With her political fortunes sinking, Moriarty decided not to run again last year, well before Operation Metro Surge began. During the election, Frazier’s critics have sought to cast him as her second coming.

Folk quickly name-checked Moriarty when he was asked about his differences with Frazier in a recent radio interview.

“Not unlike my differences with Mary Moriarty, I’m somebody who has stood up in court and prosecuted for the people of the state of Minnesota,” Folk said. “And Cedrick Frazier has never done that. He has never been a prosecutor and has no experience there.”

Frazier chooses his words carefully when he talks about Moriarty’s legacy. He has positioned himself as more progressive than Folk and promised to continue some priorities, such as the police accountability project. Yet he has sought to distance herself from Moriarty on other issues. Though Moriarty changed the office’s policies to avoid charging juveniles as adults, Frazier says he is open to the possibility of such charges.

“I don’t know why it’s fair for him to say I’m going to be Mary Moriarty 2.0, but we can’t truthfully, truthfully say and talk about the fact that you worked under Donald Trump and you’re a partner at Jones Day,” Frazier said.

The family of the woman slain by the two teens said they felt betrayed by Moriarty’s decision to charge them as juveniles instead of adults. Frazier said that he will be more skillful in talking to community members than Moriarty. He will bring the same approach to killings perpetrated by law enforcement officers, he said.

“I’m going to have use-of-force experts right there with me, helping to inform me when I make those decisions,” he said. “And I’ll be very clear: If the case can’t be charged, I will go out and I will have that tough conversation with the community.”

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Fonte: The Intercept