State officials are arguing that they have the right to access evidence in Saturday’s fatal shooting of Alexi Pretti after federal authorities blocked Minnesota investigators from the scene.
A lawsuit filed by local authorities asked for a temporary restraining order to immediately prevent the federal government from destroying or altering any evidence collected in the case.
U.S. District Judge Eric Tostrud granted the request over the weekend; the federal government objected to it. Attorneys for the state and federal government argued at a hearing Monday over whether the temporary restraining order should remain in effect. Tostrud took the matter under advisement.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) filed the lawsuit against the federal government on Saturday, after a Border Patrol officer killed Pretti, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident. Pretti was killed about 9:03 a.m. while observing federal immigration enforcement actions on Nicollet Avenue near W. 26th Street.
According to the lawsuit, federal authorities seized evidence such as cell phones and detained witnesses after the shooting. Federal authorities also blocked state investigators from accessing the scene, even after the BCA obtained a search warrant granting them access. The BCA investigates officer-involved shootings in Minnesota.
The lawsuit says that when federal agents left the scene a few hours after the shooting, the scene wasn’t secured to prevent the public or others from accessing the site, “potentially spoiling evidence,” the lawsuit says.
Attorneys representing the BCA and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office argued in federal court Monday that the temporary restraining order should remain in effect to ensure that all evidence is preserved.
Deputy Solicitor General Peter Farrell, who argued in court on behalf of the BCA, said that the state has identified “serious irregularities” in the federal government’s investigation so far, such as state officials being denied access to a public street and top federal officials posting their conclusions about the shooting on social media.
“I do not think you can turn a blind eye to the rush to judgement,” Farrell told Tostrud.
Clare Diegel, representing the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, said because the federal government is not cooperating with state officials on the investigation, that federal authorities could hypothetically close their investigation and then destroy the evidence.
“Nothing about what is going on here is normal, nothing,” she said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Friedrich Siekert, representing the federal government, argued that the investigation is a “federal matter,” and procedures regarding evidence preservation are being followed, meaning that the temporary restraining order is not needed.
“We don’t want the court to get involved in micromanaging, if you will, of an ongoing federal matter,” Siekert said.
Siekert also said while evidence is being preserved, that the federal government would “draw the line” at allowing state investigators access to evidence in their possession.
The lawsuit says that the federal government’s denial of state and local law enforcement access to evidence is “contrary to core principles of federalism embodied in the U.S. Constitution and poses an unreasonable interference with Plaintiffs’ ability to carry out their sovereign right and responsibility to investigate possible violations of state law [within] the State’s borders.”
The BCA was also pushed out of investigating the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Mackin Good, who was also killed by a federal immigration agent. Federal authorities originally agreed to investigate her killing alongside the BCA, then told the state it would not be included and would not receive any evidence collected by the federal government.
“Contrary to long-standing procedures and accepted norms of state and federal cooperation, it appears federal authorities have taken exclusive possession of evidence from the scene,” the lawsuit says of the Pretti shooting scene. “Unfortunately, based on the government’s refusal to allow BCA to participate in this and another similar investigation, there is every reason to believe that Defendants will continue to deny Plaintiffs access to that evidence absent this Court’s intervention.
