Video analysis details Good shooting; federal officials cited self-defense
In a reply filed Tuesday, Justice Department attorneys said there was no active court case when Minnesota made its requests for evidence from federal agencies in the investigations of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The attorneys cited the department’s Touhy regulations for responding to record requests, which they said apply only when formal legal proceedings are underway, and argued that it was within the department’s discretion to decline to share information with state authorities.
Minnesota prosecutors have asked a judge to order federal agencies to hand over the evidence. In court filings, they argued the agencies “have identified no legal authority or rational basis justifying their obstruction of state criminal investigations.”
Minnesota officials sued President Donald Trump’s administration in March for access to materials they said they needed to investigate the shootings independently. The shootings occurred during federal immigration enforcement activity in Minneapolis earlier this year. The Trump administration has suggested that state prosecutors do not have jurisdiction to investigate federal officers, while Minnesota officials have said they do not trust the federal government to investigate itself.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, while she was leaving a Minneapolis protest on Jan. 7. Bystander video shows Good in the driver’s seat of an SUV, repeatedly honking the horn, when masked immigration officers order her to step out of the vehicle. She starts to pull forward, and an officer standing in front of the car fires at her windshield. The officer, then standing about an arm’s length from the open driver’s-side window, fires twice more, according to an analysis of the videos by The Associated Press and others.
Federal officials at the time said the officer acted in self-defense.
Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was killed weeks later by a federal officer in Minneapolis. Good’s death and Pretti’s death ignited nationwide protests against the Republican president’s immigration enforcement efforts. No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the fatal shootings.
Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said in a legal declaration that federal authorities still had Good’s clothing, the cell phone of the officer who killed her and interview recordings that state authorities had never been able to view.
Evans said the federal government also had not shared a recorded statement from an officer who shot Pretti, the firearms used by the officers, their phones, projectiles and casings, or a gun taken from Pretti before he was shot.
Minnesota’s requests remain specific: the state is still seeking the officers’ cell phones in both shootings and recordings of key interviews. State officials say they need those materials to examine the shootings independently.
State prosecutors announced in July that the federal government had begun turning over evidence in the cases, including police body camera video and hard drives containing statements. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said at the time that the state expected to receive “all the evidence.”
But Minnesota investigators said in October court filings that the transfer of evidence stopped soon after the July announcement. Moriarty said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota told her on Sept. 10 that evidence sharing would be on pause indefinitely “in light of challenges with D.C.,” according to the documents.
At issue is whether the killings can be examined by anyone other than the federal government whose officers are involved.