Leaders alarmed about fairness of FBI inquest into Minneapolis ICE shooting | Minnesota ICE shooting

State and local leaders say they don’t believe the FBI investigation into the shooting death of Renée Nicole Good will be fair and impartial, and are sounding the alarm about the impact of federal officials withholding evidence in a possible prosecution of the ICE agent who killed her.

Minnesota’s main investigative agency, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, initially began investigating the shooting in conjunction with the FBI. But the BCA issued a statement Thursday morning saying that “the U.S. Attorney’s Office has made an about-face: the investigation would now be conducted solely by the FBI, and the BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, on-site evidence, or investigative interviews necessary to conduct a thorough and independent investigation.”

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, a Democrat and county attorney, clarified during a news conference Friday that the BCA — which was created in the wake of the George Floyd case — has very high investigative standards and those standards cannot be met when the organization does not have access to all the evidence. That doesn’t preclude an investigation, she said. But lack of access to evidence is hampering the investigation.

“When the BCA arrived on scene, the evidence had been collected by the FBI,” she said. “They took the car and took it to where the BCA doesn’t have access to the car. And the problem is not that the FBI took the car, it’s that the BCA doesn’t have access to the car, or even, at this point, access to the forensic evaluation that results from the investigation of this car.”

At a news conference Friday, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the federal government’s narrative portraying Good as the villain “rubbish” and called on the state to conduct its own investigation. “Now is the time to respect the law,” he said. “Now is not the time to hide the facts. It is the time to accept them, making sure to push for transparency every step of the way.”

“The fact that Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice and the presidential administration have already reached a conclusion on these facts is deeply concerning,” he added.

Media reports identified the officer who shot Good as Jonathan Ross. ICE agents allowed Ross to leave the scene moments after the shooting, taking with him the gun used in the shooting.

“It doesn’t preclude a state investigation, but if the feds say, for example, you don’t even have the opportunity to look at the gun that was used to kill this person, that would certainly complicate things,” said Eric J Nelson, a defense attorney in Minneapolis with long experience defending police officers accused of crimes. Nelson represented Derek Chauvin in his murder trial for Floyd’s killing.

The legal standard for proving excessive force is the “objective reasonableness” of the act, as outlined in the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor. From that case came policies governing when and how police officers can use force. The standards are essentially the same for state and federal prosecutions, he said.

The breakdown in cooperation between state and federal agencies in this investigation is “shocking,” Nelson said, and goes against public expectations of legal standards.

“There may be political differences, but at the end of the day, in an issue like this, I don’t really think politics should have a place,” he said.

Moriarty and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called on the public to send whatever evidence they have to state and local investigators, given their concerns about access to documents held by the FBI.

“We don’t know what we’re going to get now,” Moriarty said. “We believe there may be other evidence, videos, that sort of thing. We won’t know. And so, as the attorney general and I know, it’s critical to preserve the evidence.”

Statements by Donald Trump and others on the matter amplify fears of bias on the part of local leaders.

Trump described the 37-year-old U.S. citizen and mother of three killed by an ICE agent as a “high-level agitator” and “professional troublemaker,” without evidence. Claims that Good harassed officers have been widely disputed by local and state leaders in Minnesota as well as eyewitnesses.

Hours after the shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the shooting was justified and that the driver deliberately aimed her car at the officer in an act of “domestic terrorism.” Noem also said state-level prosecutors “have no jurisdiction in this investigation.”

On Thursday, JD Vance said in response to a question about sharing the investigation with Minnesota law enforcement that the officer “is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.”

Lawyers familiar with state and federal law and lawsuits against police officers say the vice president’s and Noem’s claims are simply false.

“The fact that the FBI is taking over the investigation does not preclude the state from conducting its own investigation,” Nelson said. “Both independent courts, state and federal, would make a decision regarding the charges. I would expect the State of Minnesota to continue to conduct its own investigation into this matter.”

The federal officials’ statements raise questions about whether a federal investigation would be fair. Frey called the outlook “pretty bleak.”

“We know they’ve already determined a lot of the investigation,” Frey said, “and even if they haven’t, it seems like conclusions are being drawn early on.”