Hennepin county attorney Mary Moriarty, who issued the directive, came under fire last week for not charging state employee caught vandalizing Teslas
Prosecutors in Minnesota’s largest county are now required to take a criminal defendant’s race into account when negotiating plea deals, following a new directive from Hennepin county attorney Mary Moriarty (D.).
“While racial identity and age are not appropriate grounds for departures [from the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines], proposed resolutions should consider the person charged as a whole person, including their racial identity and age,” Moriarty’s directive reads, according to Minneapolis outlet KARE11. “While these factors should not be controlling, they should be part of the overall analysis.”
“Prosecutors should be identifying and addressing racial disparities at decision points, as appropriate,” Moriarty added, arguing that such disparities cause “distrust” and harm “community safety.”
The county attorney’s race-conscious policy comes as President Donald Trump cracks down on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, which he has called “illegal and immoral discrimination programs,” at the federal level. Trump has signed executive orders banning DEI programs across the federal bureaucracy and the military and has withheld millions in federal funding from a slew of universities for failing to abolish such programs.
Moriarty, who became Hennepin County’s top prosecutor in January 2023 after receiving donations from a group linked to Democratic megadonor George Soros, faced backlash last week after she declined to charge a state employee who was caught on video vandalizing Tesla cars and causing more than $20,000 in damages. Moriarty has come under scrutiny for repeatedly refusing to prosecute accused rapists and killers, according to the New York Post.
A spokesperson for Hennepin County attorney’s office defended Moriarty’s directive, telling KARE11 that “a defendant’s race matters because we know unaddressed unconscious biases lead to racial disparities, which is an unacceptable outcome.”
Jill Hasday, a constitutional law professor at the University of Minnesota, said Moriarty’s policy will likely be overturned by the Supreme Court and accused the progressive prosecutor of writing it ambiguously to skirt constitutional issues.
“It both says, ‘Don’t take race into account,’ presumably because of the constitutional problems with taking race into account in addition to potentially political objections, but it simultaneously says this is something you should consider,” Hasday told KARE11.
“And the problem for the drafters of this policy is, once you take race into account, it doesn’t really matter what else you say,” Hasday said. “The policy is going to be struck down.”
This article was originally published at freebeacon.com
