(KNSI) — The Hennepin County Board of Commissioners Tuesday voted 5-1 in favor of the county attorney’s office to hire outside prosecutors to take over the murder case against Minnesota State Trooper Ryan Londregan.
Londrean is charged with second-degree unintentional murder, first-degree assault, and second-degree manslaughter for fatally shooting Ricky Cobb II after he allegedly became uncooperative during a traffic stop and tried to flee, dragging Londregan and another trooper for several feet along Interstate 94 in Minneapolis on July 31st.
The lead prosecutor, Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Joshua Larson, took himself off the case last month. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty argued that Londregan has hired three defense attorneys, and she can’t afford to assign three prosecutors because her office is ten attorneys down in the adult prosecution division. The Londregan case is “resource intensive” and “unique” in the way it must be litigated, so an outside firm needs to be retained.
At least one board member voiced concerns about ongoing costs and what would happen after they burn through the $1 million, wondering where it would end, saying it would be hard to stop funding once it starts. Moriarty didn’t directly address that question.
The firm, Steptoe LLP, is based in Washington, D.C. Londregan’s defense attorney said Moriarty could hire 1,000 D.C. attorneys, and the result would be the same.
The Minnesota Peace and Police Officer’s Association General Counsel Imran Ali said Moriarty had to hire outside litigators because her office “has no prosecutors ethically willing to handle the Mr. Londregan matter.” Instead of turning to Attorney General Keith Ellison or any of the other 86 county attorneys in the state, she hired a firm that will be “financially motivated to prosecute this case at the direction of the Hennepin County Attorney who has a long history of bias against law enforcement.”
Moriarty told the board she would hold absolute authority over the case, and the funding would come from her allocated $78 million budget.
According to the statement, “even if the money allocated to the prosecution is from the existing budget,” the citizens of Minnesota and residents of Hennepin County should be “outraged.” It accuses Moriarty of prosecuting police “at all costs.”
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