Insane: Hennepin County Prosecutor Mandates Race Be Considered When Prosecuting Offenders

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty recently gained notoriety for not prosecuting a Minnesota government employee for committing a series of felonies for keying Teslas. It was a travesty, one made even more blatant by the fact that her office is prosecuting a woman for causing much less damage, vandalizing one car instead of six Teslas.

NEWS: After deciding to not charge 33-year-old Dylan Adams for allegedly vandalizing six Teslas and causing over $21,000 in damage, Minneapolis County Attorney Mary Moriarty, on the same day, charged a 19-year-old woman with no record with a first-degree felony for keying one car… pic.twitter.com/nnS6UnE48b

— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) April 25, 2025

Moriarty is, of course, a Soros prosecutor in the mold of Chesa Boudin. And, as a Soros prosecutor, her veneration for the law is about as great as Joe Biden’s or Nancy Pelosi’s veneration for Catholic doctrine on abortion and family life. 

Fresh off her farcical application of the law in Dylan Adams’ case, she is implementing a policy–starting tomorrow–that requires prosecutors in her office to use race as a consideration when pursuing and resolving cases. 

Prosecutors to consider race in plea deals under new policy written by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty https://t.co/1HrH5WNXHP

— KARE 11 (@kare11) April 26, 2025

This is the equivalent–in reverse–of what happened in the old South when the justice system used different rules for white offenders and black ones. In the old Jim Crow era, whites were given breaks and blacks were reamed by law enforcement; in Hennepin County–which includes Minneapolis and has 1.3 million residents–prosecutions will be driven by racial considerations, ensuring that different rules apply to “marginalized” communities and straight, white men in particular. 

MINNEAPOLIS — 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. 

A constitutional law professor warns the policy could be deemed unconstitutional if challenged in court, even if Moriarty’s office intentionally crafted the policy to avoid those legal issues.

KARE 11 News reporter Lou Raguse received a copy of the policy from sources inside Moriarty’s office after it began being distributed this week. The document entitled “Negotiations Policy for Cases Involving Adult Defendants” lays out several considerations for prosecutors to take as they negotiate and offer resolutions to criminal defendants in the form of plea deals, including the race and age of the defendant.

The policy, as written, is a total mess. It has to be because what she is doing is unconstitutional on its face. Democrats are fond of saying things like “nobody is above the law,” when we all know that this is exactly the opposite of what they mean. We have seen the ever greater escalation of leftist judges and law enforcement officials breaking laws with abandon, and once caught, they double and triple down. 

🚨 BREAKING: Soros-backed Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty is now requiring prosecutors to consider race when offering plea deals.

These liberal activist prosecutors are completely out of control. pic.twitter.com/mpjntiQztE

— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) April 25, 2025

Then the entire Democratic Party goes into faux outrage mode, blaming Republicans for forcing Democrats to break the law. No doubt, soon Republicans will be dragged into court for challenging these blatantly unconstitutional acts. Oh–they have already done that over the past few years. 

The new hotness in Democratic Party circles is to applaud blatant lawbreaking–up to and including judges committing felonies in front of law enforcement officials. It is an insurrection–and in this case, a real one, not one invented out of whole cloth. 

Jill Hasday, a University of Minnesota professor specializing in constitutional law, said the policy appears deliberately written to be ambiguous to avoid well-known constitutional issues involving the Equal Protection Clause.

“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 said. “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. The policy is going to be struck down.”

The liberals in the legal profession will no doubt circle the wagons, arguing that recognizing racial disparities is a matter of rebalancing the scales.  It is indisputably true that blacks are disproportionately represented in the “justice-impacted community, (i.e. criminals), but that isn’t because blacks are being hunted as criminals. 

It’s because blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crimes (and, by the way, are a disproportionate portion of the victims). 

“This policy acknowledges that there are many factors to be considered in negotiations. Each case – and defendant – is unique. Someone’s age may change the likelihood of growth and change. A defendant’s race matters because we know unaddressed unconscious biases lead to racial disparities, which is an unacceptable outcome.

Our goal with this policy matches the goal of all our work: to achieve safe, equitable, and just outcomes that center the healing of victims while improving public safety.”

Regarding constitutional questions, Hasday agreed that age consideration in the policy is likely constitutional because the HCAO cites brain development and the corresponding science behind decision-making. 

Hasday says the Supreme Court subjects race-based government action to a higher level of review, however, and has explicitly rejected the idea that combating societal discrimination is a sufficient reason.

Nobody thinks that age shouldn’t be one of the considerations in prosecutorial discretion, as long as the issue is considered as only one of many factors in a case. But race? Should there really be one standard for blacks and another for whites? 

Well, we already know that in Moriarty’s mind, one’s politics matter quite a bit–think back to the Tesla vandalism case. 

The rules in liberal jurisdictions have become utterly arbitrary, basically boiling down to the political preferences of whoever is in charge. For all the talk about “norms” and “nobody” being above the law, what is meant is simply, “I am the law, so live with my decisions.”