2020 candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) campaign rally in her home state of Minnesota was cancelled on Sunday night after Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters disrupted the event on behalf of Myon Burrell, whom Klobuchar had prosecuted for murder.
Despite all the evidence pointing to Burrell’s innocence, Klobuchar had insisted on keeping him incarcerated.
That is cold.
Amazing the skeletons that can emerge if a candidate is properly vetted.
No gun, no fingerprints, no DNA.
She’s earned this protest.
Karma
But does she even how the authority to do something about it? Shouldn’t they be protesting the one who has the power to reopen the case?
I won’t profess to be an expert on this case, but so long as the prosecutor is not actively concealing or suppressing evidence, if they think they have a reasonable case and are acting in good faith, their job is to present the evidence in a style favorable to the prosecution. To do otherwise would be just as wrong as a defense attorney not advocating for a not-guilty verdict for their client. The adversarial justice system is fundamentally premised on both sides making their best argument.
I don’t see anything to suggest that Klobuchar acted in bad faith in this case.
She was pretty much done anyway. This is like going to a funeral to make sure the deceased is really dead.
They feel she isn’t qualified to be president in a large part because of this case, and while they obviously want the case reopened, they also want to make sure the public knows what kind of person she is. Just getting the case re-opened would be back page news. Actions like her’s need to have consequences.
She had the information that he was not guilty when she was in a position to call for a re-trial but refused to do so. That would seem to be a classic case of bad faith.
No, she had evidence that pointed to not-guilty. This is emphatically not the same as proof of not-guilty, and if you were to intentionally conflate the two, that is itself an argument made in bad faith. Nearly any complex and interesting case will have evidence pointing in both directions.
From the AP report: “Asked for comment on the case, a Klobuchar campaign spokesperson said Burrell was tried and convicted of Tyesha’s murder twice, and the second trial occurred when Klobuchar was no longer the Hennepin County Attorney. If there was new evidence, she said, it should be immediately reviewed by the court.”
If this is the start of being a prosecutor NOT being a good starting position for a political career, I’m all for it. Literally centuries of prosecutors abusing their power and going for uncalled for sentences to assist their personal political ambitions is enough.
How about we hire prosecutors interested in actual truth and justice rather than furthering a political career?
Klobuchar is taking the heat for prosecutors that refuse to reopen cases when new evidence of exoneration appears…that’s happening all over the nation, and she’s just the most visible symbol of it right now. It’s a real problem, a lot of prosecutors have put winning cases over justice, and after the win they are reluctant to say that justice was not served. Since the judicial system has proportionally more non-whites in it, this falls on them, which is why BLM is making a big deal of it.
And, Klobuchar won’t come out and say what happened…I think even BLM would be fine if she said that the evidence they had at trial showed guilt, but new evidence has been produced since then and she thinks the conviction should be revisited. She just won’t go there, and it’s a tiny step to make.
She knew then all they had were paid jailhouse informants. It wouldn’t even be honest to say everything pointed to guilty then. Anyone who thinks Klobuchar’s hands are clean here is completely gullible to her campaign’s comments or willfully dishonest. Klobuchar behaved like every prosecutor that cares more about their next elected office than justice. She saw an opportunity to close a well publicized case and shrugged off anything that didn’t add up.
In a dream world, “do your job and do it well” would be a political asset entirely without regard for what that job is, as long as your job isn’t mafia enforcer or whatever.
BLM was manipulated by Putin in 2016.
I support their cause, but the organization doesn’t seem very savvy.
I view this with skepticism.
There is no singular BLM organization. What are you even talking about?
The problem is that it isn’t an organization as such. There is no BLM Executive Committee that declares what cause or rally can or cannot authentically portray itself as a BLM cause or rally. If there were, I might say that they’ve not always done a very good job of picking their battles, but there is no “they”.
It’s like S& F, it was MiniMike policy. No one cares he’s no longer Mayor of NYC. They protest his past deeds.
Same here for Amy.
Worse, just like MiniMike she used the case to boast on how tough on crime she was…now, that’s biting her in the but, just like the AspenInstitue audio bit MiniMike in the but.
She did. She didn’t suppress evidence. She had none. Convicted 16 year old boy for life