#minnesota-law

#minnesota-law

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) Family members say the man killed by a U.S. Border Patrol officer in Minneapolis on Saturday was an intensive care nurse at a VA hospital who cared deeply about people and was upset by President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown in his city. Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed getting in adventures with Joule, his beloved Catahoula Leopard dog who also recently died.

For many, one particular breakdown is a final, damning cause for despair: Minnesota's apparent inability to investigate and potentially prosecute the federal agents responsible. The Department of Homeland Security on Saturday reportedly blocked Minnesota officials from examining the scene of Alex Pretti's shooting. Access was refused even after state officials got a judicial search warrant. As a result, key forensic evidence was almost certainly lost. This comes after state officials were excluded from the investigation into Renee Good's death.

So I gave them a specific time and - to get it done. If they don't, then by all mean, I'm going to walk out. And before I walk out, I was able to release another individual, a juvenile. That kind of like a step - like a barrier. Like, Wait, Julie, stop. You need to go back and get more people out. That's why I'm still here.

Thompson resigned from the U.S. attorney's office in mid-January due to the Department of Justice's handling of the investigation into the killing of Renee Good at the hands of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent. Senior DOJ officials resisted Thompson and other prosecutors' calls to investigate the shooting itself, instead pushing for an investigation into Good's widow. Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota, including Thompson, resigned over the government's lack of scrutiny into the shooting, as did an FBI agent who sought to investigate the ICE officer who killed Good.

Lawyers love legal reasoning. It promises a clean, clear path through sticky, tricky territory. But legal reasoning can enable grotesque real-world outcomes, like torture, or arresting journalists, or masked government agents detaining and disappearing people. On this week's Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is in conversation with Joseph Margulies, Professor of Practice of Government at Cornell University. Margulies litigated some of the biggest cases of egregious human rights violations of the post-9/11 "War on Terror", an experience that informed his recent piece in the Boston Review:

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - A federal officer shot a person in the leg in Minneapolis after being attacked with a shovel during an arrest Wednesday, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The person cautioned the information was still preliminary, and the investigation was in its early stages. The person could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.

The Justice Department has opened a civil rights probe into Pretti's fatal shooting by federal immigration officers. However, the Trump administration has said there is no need for a similar probe into Good's death. Minnesota officials launched legal steps soon after Pretti's killing in an effort to stake their claim to investigate, including obtaining a search warrant and suing to "vindicate their right to access evidence."

Fifteen years ago I wrote an essay analyzing how music can empower social change in the wake of the law's failure - When the Law Needs Music, published as part of a Fordham Urban Law Journal symposium on the music of Bob Dylan. My focus there was on a case called NAACP v. Button, where the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protected the NAACP's legal assistance to individuals for the enforcement of constitutional and civil rights.

Minnesota's state official who investigates such shootings said in court filings he'd never seen federal agents block local access to a crime scene where both feds and the state had jurisdiction in 20 years on the job. It's the second time this month federal agents blocked Minnesota police from investigating a shooting death by federal officials. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has already pledged a state investigation, blasting the federal government's accounts of Alex Pretti's final moments as "lies."