Minnesota can’t manage to spend a single day out of the national spotlight for some new malfeasance. And it’s Mary Moriarty, again.
Lou Raguse, the ever-alert crime reporter for the local NBC affiliate, reports tonight (Friday) on the latest outrage from Hennepin County’s soft-on-crime “prosecutor,”
Starting Monday, prosecutors in Hennepin County will be required to consider race when offering plea deals, according to a new policy from County Attorney Mary Moriarty.
And by “consider,” the new policy reads,
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.
“Not appropriate” under state law (or the Constitution for that matter), but the policy goes on to discuss racial disparities. The clear implication is that members of certain racial groups should be offered more generous plea bargain terms than member of other groups.
All of this seems odd, given that Moriarty rarely prosecutes anyone other than law enforcement officers trying to serve and protect the public. And just this week, Moriarty made international news by declining to charge a state employee–a 33-year-old white man–for any of the recommended six felony counts for his serial Tesla vandalism.
Raguse reports that Moriarty’s office issued a press statement that reads, in part,
A defendant’s race matters because we know unaddressed unconscious biases lead to racial disparities, which is an unacceptable outcome.
How do we know that? The above sentence seems to represent a classic case of “assuming a fact not in evidence.”
It’s always something.
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