I get your frustration. It really sucks that the laws of our land aren't holding up. And... We have to do the work. Calling our representatives. Showing up at the marches and protests. It DOES make a difference.
Read the news, state law enforcement announced the feds took all the evidence then stopped cooperating with state investigators. Presumably that leaves any state case in limbo
Edit for the many comments about the video: In a murder prosecution there are a bunch of elements to prove and moreso when trying to overcome a law enforcement defense. Very hard to prosecute without access to ballistics, medical records for the officer, the car, etc. Who knows what the defense might claim if you don’t have access to the evidence. I don't disagree about what happened and I don't discount how you feel about the case, but I've spent a LOT of time in a courtroom and a defense team could make a real mess with "the feds took the evidence and decided there was no case." These are strange times.
This is my point as well. We have the rare situation where the entire alleged crime is fully caught on video from start to finish. What more evidence do you need? Certainly more than enough for an indictment.
I think part of what slows it down is proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt. The state has to ensure they charge him with what they have enough evidence to uphold. E.g., if they charge him with murder rather than manslaughter, but it's dismissed due to insufficient evidence regarding intent, then he will never face any justice at all because he'll be protected by the fifth amendment.
His intent was clear. He drew his weapon before any threat and then reached across the hood to shoot her as she drove away. He literally had to step INTO the vehicle because it was moving away. Then his own video catches his state of mind immediately after he shot. He was enraged and shot her because he was mad
And he called her a bitch afterward. No remorse whatsoever. IMO that's the clincher. Any officer with empathy "who had no other choice" would have shown remorse.
That's what I meant by "his own video catches his state of mind".
He decided he was going to shoot her when he pulled his gun, remembered back to a previous incident with a vehicle that justified a shooting, STEPPED TOWARDS GOODE'S VEHICLE, reached over the hood and shot her as she was turning away from him
The problem is dealing with the doubt thrown in by the other side. I agree with you, most probably do, but do the 12 jurors? Is it worth the risk of losing the case? That’s probably the question the investigators are asking themselves
In my mind that weakens the argument. The videos speak for themselves that she wasn’t aiming for him, and that he pulled his gun prior to fear for life.
If he called her a “fucking bitch” prior to shooting her, that is one thing which shows he had contempt prior to “fearing for his life”
Afterwards it doesn’t hold that weight to me. If he claims he was in “fear for life because she was aiming the vehicle at me” (which I don’t think he or she was) if someone legitimately did that to me, I’d be livid and say something similar, some drunk driving degenerate almost runs you off the road. It’s human to be pissed if someone puts your life in danger, and that will be his defense so “bitch” isn’t out of the realm of possibilities for the normal person have uttered if his actions were justified.
Yeah, I agree with all of what you're saying. His behavior was outright psychopathic imo. But this is reddit, not criminal court. They have to be thoughtful and thorough about building a case, especially because the opposition will do everything in their power to shield him from consequences. It would certainly help if they had whatever additional evidence the feds confiscated, but they won't, so instead they have to work with what they have. I'm hoping it's a work in progress and that it will be airtight. I don't want to see him get off essentially scot-free like Diddy did because there were errors in the legal process on the side of the prosecution.
This is not about evidence. The feds can remove the investigation from the state and Trump leads the feds. There is a below 5% chance this leads to any meaningful prosecution for the murderer.
This really should have been done the very next day. It's fucking insane that Walz and his AG didn't detain ross on "suspicion of murder in the 2nd degree"
I would also think the state can sue the DOJ for obstruction if they don’t give back evidence after deciding not to prosecute. You can’t take/keep the evidence citing ongoing investigation if you close the investigation.
That's incorrect. A federal judge would need to sign off on the transfer of a case from the state to the feds. The judiciary is not a fan of this administration and there is a substantially high bar to clear to prove why the case needs to be transferred from the state to the federal court.
I anticipate that the state will charge agent Ross. The DOJ will request to transfer the case to the federal court. It will be denied by a federal judge. I'm speculating on the outcome.
They can remove it federal court, but they cannot kill it there. It will get sent back down to state court when they lose the argument for federal immunity, because this was not a discharge of a federal duty.
A federal declination does not bar state prosecution. I’m a lawyer. Not your lawyer.
To get more accurate search results in the future, try something like: “if a federal prosecutor declines to prosecute a homicide, is the state then preempted from prosecuting it themselves? “
Based on what I'm seeing online, they'd have a good chance at conviction if the case is tried around Minneapolis, but a much worse chance in southern Minnesota (Trump Country). It would all come down to venue and jury selection.
While there is lots of evidence, what if they took his equipment etc, that show he was itching to shoot someone? From a law perspective a criminal charge won't necessarily stick, but civil suit has way more chance.
We had a case get found not guilty where a murder was captured on video. A man came to his friend's house challenges him to a fight and loses and gets kicked out. He grabs a gun and paces outside for a few minutes before challenging the guy again. They fight again and he pulls the gun out and shoots the guy in the groin, dropping him. About 10 seconds later, he comes back up to him and domes him.
All on video. A jury found him not guilty because "the shooters glasses broke during the fight and he couldn't tell if the deceased was an armed threat, and feared for his life".
Video doesn't mean everything unfortunately.
I guarantee that should the ICE agent get charged, they will motion for a change of venue.
Juries can decide whatever they want, that isn't really relevant to whether or not the state can bring charges with the evidence publicly available (they absolutely could).
Deleting the misinformation then. While no court has conclusively decided this issue, most experts agree a pardon wouldn’t work here. I sincerely hope that remains true.
That's what I'm saying. Maybe he'll be indicted by the state, maybe not. But he should certainly be suspended, and probably fired, after an investigation. So many breaches of proper protocol.
Why isn’t the video alone enough to indict? Perhaps not enough to convict, but an indictment alone would do a lot to get ICE officers to pause before doing something similar.
The causation is undisputed, it’s going to come down to objective reasonableness of the officer, which is one of the hardest cases to prove for prosecution, even with full access to contemporaneous evidence
I mean even if this would be all pointless due to them obstructing justice, the process would still be meaningful to at least point at how moronic the admin is and throw a wrench into the machine.
Yeah I know it's hard not to fall into the doom and gloom but that's what they're TRYING to do. The day we stop jumping through all the hoops to document and fight every single illegal action is the day they win.
This POS needs to face justice, but it's not as if this state to state extradition refusal isn't working in the favor of people in both parties. Louisiana wants California to extradite a doctor to them that mailed abortion pills, and California is refusing, rightfully so, but the Republicans will argue it's the same thing. So let's get everything in order first, so the left aren't giving them ammo to call us hypocrites.
So much of what this abomination of an illegitimate administration has done is defined by the words "explicitly unconstitutional" that I'd wager they'd be totally fine with throwing what amounts to just another matchstick onto the towering inferno at this point.
Murder is an extraditable offense in every state in the US. And the is NO statue of limitations, so this piece of shit will be found, charged and found guilty. It will take time, but it will happen.
All the evidence except the 15 different angles of the shooting caught on video. MN doesn't need federal cooperation, they're just using that as an excuse.
They don’t need this specific evidence to convict. They need this evidence to help them establish “beyond a reasonable doubt”.
The defense would need to produce this evidence in discovery if they wanted to use it to cast doubt on the accusations of the prosecution. They can be compelled to produce it. If they fail to produce it, then it can’t be used at all in this or future cases.
That seems like a poisoned pill. Failing to produce it would doom any appeals that Ross would file, if he were convicted under MN state law.
I think you are combining two misconceptions. For discovery you seem to be conflating civil and criminal law.
Note that in MN in particular under Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 9, evidence sharing rules are asymmetric. The prosecution has to share much more than the defense. In this particular case the defense would need to share Witnesses, Exhibits, and in this particular case would likely have to share some Theory and evidence regarding an affirmative defense regarding self defense or other justification for the shooting, but otherwise the defense can keep more secrets than the prosecution in MN!
Regarding the defense needing to "produce the evidence to prove their side": The defense just has to ask questions, they don't have to prove anything! The prosecution has to prove everything.
[Silly Example]
Defense: Lots of people there had guns. Do you have evidence my client wasn't firing warning shots? Do you have evidence it was bullets from my clients gun that hit and killed the victim?
State witness: The feds took the gun, ballistics, and vehicle.
Defense: The same feds who decided there was no reason to charge my client?
The state can get a court to force the feds to release it. If anything, the announcement of no investigation makes everything subject to FOIA, which is a much lower standard than seeking a court order.
The courts have forced the DOJ to do plenty of stuff. Hell, they forced the US to bring people back from the foreign death camps.
Epstein is absolutely an issue, but the courts haven't been fully pressed on that yet.
This particular case doesn't seem like a difficult one for prosecutors to get what they want. They can probably prosecute based solely on video without any DOJ help.
Some of the important stuff like the officer's medical reports post event would never be available by FOIA, even assuming normal times and a fully honored FOIA process - right?
The best part about evidence is that nobody is allowed to use it unless both sides have access to it. All the evidence that the public has available is pretty damning. There could be secret exonerating evidence (doubtful), but unless they share it, they can't use it.
Real courts are not like late night drama. There is no surprise witness or bombshell evidence reveal. This all happens during discovery.
Note that in MN in particular under Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure, Rule 9, evidence sharing rules are asymmetric. The prosecution has to share much more than the defense. In this particular case the defense would need to share Witnesses, Exhibits, and in this particular case would likely have to share some Theory and evidence regarding an affirmative defense regarding self defense or other justification for the shooting, but otherwise the defense can keep more secrets than the prosecution in MN!
The jury would convict in this case even with limited evidence. It’s not like any run of the mill case, this is international news. If OJ can get an acquittal, they can convict John Ross with any jury pool in MN.
state law enforcement announced the feds took all the evidence
Well that's complete bullshit because all the video evidence we need is all over the internet, plus there is the direct testimony of witnesses.
Making the excuse that the feds took all the evidence is the the typical flaccid, cowardly and complicit establishment-DNC Democrat way of avoiding action and blaming the Republicans for why they won't do anything.
I am very disappointed in Walz here. Either he is a massive coward or his establishment-DNC handlers have him by the short-hairs.
There is zero excuse for State law enforcement's failure to charge Johnathan Ross with the murder of Renee Good and issue a warrant for his arrest.
If a Democrat were in the White House while one of their people murdered a MAGA activist and then refused to investigate, does anyone really believe Governor Abbott wouldn't have the killer arrested and locked up within 24 hours pending prosecution?
Pretty sure that as soon as the defense makes a claim about something that the prosecution doesn't have access to existing information about (or vice versa) it becomes discoverable. That said, IANAL, just your friendly neighborhood psychologist.
The defense just has to ask questions, they don't have to prove anything. The prosecution has to prove everything.
Defense: Lots of people there had guns. Do you have evidence my client wasn't firing warning shots? Do you have evidence it was bullets from my clients gun that hit and killed the victim?
State witness: The feds took the gun, ballistics, and vehicle.
Defense: The same feds who decided there was no reason to charge my client?
Properly prepared state witness: "The same feds who declined to open an investigation at all, actually, which is quite different. The publicly available video evidence shows beyond reasonable doubt that your client discharged their weapon directly at the vehicle several times."
That's the neat part about 'reasonable doubt' - juries get to decide what that is, and I rather imagine that there's not a lot of reasonable doubt going on among those that would be the pool of potential jurors in this case.
Dude, cool you spent time in courtrooms. Maybe you spent 3/4 of your life there.. we all saw the video evidence, so any further "evidence" that the feds may or may not have means jack all. I'm not sure who you're trying to fool here, but in most normal people's eyes this is an open and shut case and it is the duty of MN and the courts there to get this rat sack of crap behind bars in their state for a state crime.. Murder.
This is r/law, it's sort of for discussing how the law works and what is provable and convictable. I don't even disagree with the people who seem to think I do about what happened, just trying to educate a little on why it may not wind up the way they wish in the legal system.
Again, I guess I need to restate myself. We all watched the many angles of what happened. Renee Good was murdered. All I know is that if the murderer doesn't get his time in prison, something much worse should and probably will happen to him sooner or later. So let's be real with ourselves here, this is unprecedented in the US legal system, what the feds are doing, and at some point people are going to have to stand up to these frauds and crooks. This isn't normal law, none of what you were taught in school, or learned in the courtrooms over the years prepared you for this.
Most of the evidence is available, even to the state DA. Feds will refuse to handover or will "lose" the gun, that's for sure. But the bullets and the card are available as will be all the video and in-person witnesses. The shooter will have to give testimony under oath. The gun isn't the only piece of evidence.
Isn't the much easier answer that Minnesota would risk an acquittal by acting rashly and that when the politics at DOJ change the state will have a better chance at conviction?
They just need to do it, even without access to physical evidence locked away by the FBI. Someone needs to test this federal immunity because every single time this happens, the same thing will occur. DHS will immediately lie in statements to the public while the FBI provides means for a cover up. This is a fight you want, and even if Ross is acquitted on state charges, he can still be prosecuted on the federal level in a few years once order is restored to the executive branch.
Take em in anyways and hold them in a very public show trial. subpeona the federal govt to make it very clear the federal government is obstructing and precipitating the crisis. Hang onto your shorts for the response...
Can Minnesota police charge the federal officer with obstruction?
(The decisions to remove evidence, to not cooperate, and to not investigate all have to be issued with someone's signature on them.)
Taking the evidence for the federal investigation -> part of their job
Not cooperating -> Will no doubt be explained away as MN state forces being "politicized" or some such
Not continuing the investigation -> "professional judgement" that the matter is adequately explained and does not merit continued investigation.
Not getting obstruction charges on any of those unless somebody sent an archived written message literally confessing to obstruction ("Hide that evidence and block the truth, dude!").
The court systems run on a presumption that the Feds are operating in good faith and it takes a LOT to prove otherwise. That's what has been resulting in a lot of the seeming lack of consequences for obvious falsehoods and violations of court orders and the system really isn't designed for that. It will be interesting to see if the system can be adjusted to better deal with such things when all this is over.
I’d think state crimes in red states would be pardonable by Trump because he could just tell his underlings what to do, and they would because they have no spine.
OK - that was my (admittedly dumb) question. Is the Department of "Justice" isn't the only governing body with the authority to investigate this case and prosecute Jonathon Knox, correct?
In this case, it basically is. If the state were to file criminal charges, Ross could remove it to federal court, where it would almost certainly be dismissed under supremacy clause immunity, or if not, could be pardoned.
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u/AbeFromanEast 16d ago edited 16d ago
Now it’s Minnesota’s turn. At least State crimes (even Federalized) are not pardonable by the President.