Without pursuing reform, Mary Moriarty said, the criminal justice system will not be able to provide public safety or level racial disparities.
“A just system and reform go hand-in-hand,” Moriarty said.
Moriarty gained this insight after working 31 years with the Hennepin County Public Defender’s office, including six years as the chief public defender.
“I’m the only person in this race who has actually led a large law office,” Moriarity said. The Hennepin County Public Defender’s office had about 120 lawyers when she was there.
Moriarty said she also held various other leadership positions within the public defender’s office, like chairing the Behavioral Health Committee, work that led to the creation of Hennepin County’s Behavioral Health Center where officers can take people who are experiencing mental health or substance abuse crises.
“I worked out a process with the Minneapolis City Attorney’s office that they would not charge many of the cases if the person was brought there,” Moriarity said.
Moriarty, 58, who was raised in New Ulm, settled in Minneapolis during law school. She retired as a public defender in 2021 but teaches at the University of Minnesota and Harvard University law schools and helps train people who want to be prosecutors in southern states like Alabama and Mississippi.
“I do a lot of training, which I think is really important when you have a young office, which the county attorney’s office is,” Moriarty said.
She often gets asked about going from county public defender to county prosecutor. She said her time as a public defender helped her see what an ideal prosecutor might look like.
“I sat next to and represented people. I knew their social histories. I knew that they had been subjected to a lot of trauma in their life. Had we intervened early on they might not have been sitting in that chair next to me. I also watched how people who had been harmed or victims had been treated by the county attorney’s office. Often that wasn’t good. I know the judges, I know the system really well,” she said.
Moriarty said she wants a public safety system that does not result in mass incarceration, racial disparities, and people cycling in and out of the system. That includes youth and those struggling with chemical dependency and mental health conditions, she said.
As for violent crimes like murders and carjackings, Moriarty said that deterrence — delivering strict punishment — does not “do a heck of a whole lot.”
Instead, she is in favor of investing more in communities through programs that serve residents who have been dealing with high levels of gun violence for decades. For example, she said, there are ongoing programs that train young people to talk to their peers about emotions that may lead to criminal acts. Another program trains “trusted messengers” in conflict resolution, and another seeks out the loved ones and friends of victims of violence in order to persuade them to not retaliate.
Moriarty also said she would push for diversion programs for youth and people struggling with mental health and addiction. She was on the Hennepin County steering committee for drug court, veteran court, and mental health court, and said she knows how to craft such diversion initiatives.
Moriarty said she would not prosecute “anyone seeking reproductive care” in Minnesota. “If they came from another state and that other state was trying to prosecute or extradite them, or serve a subpoena for them to testify in another state, I would object to that,” Moriarty said.
But she is interested in ratcheting up accountability for police officers.
“I’ve seen body cam and dash cams and cameras in police cars. Hours of it,” Moriarty said. “ I don’t think people realize it’s prosecutors who see that video more than police leadership. As county attorney, I will have us flag behavior we see, policy violations, and make sure police leadership are seeing that so they can intervene and add it to their file.”
The MPR article sounds like she doesn’t play office politics especially well. It’s “inside baseball.” Apparently, Moriarty isn’t especially skilled at soothing egos in other departments. That might be a fireable offense, but it’s not a reason for me to vote for someone else, She seems to have actively worked toward a more equitable system, which is a big plus as far as I’m concerned.
I’d like more specifics about the alleged “culture of fear” in her office. If she doesn’t take criticism from underlings well, that’s a problem that can be fixed. To the degree that it’s true, it’s also a behavioral trait she has in common with executives in both private and public sectors in every state and county (and virtually every city) across the country. So it’s a minus, but not necessarily one that disqualifies her. I’d need to know more before deciding, so I’ll do a little web-sleuthing today.
Rank Choice Voting (My Ballot)
1. Dimick
2. Jones
3. Moriarity
4. Winkler
Interesting to note that while some candidates speak of mass incarceration problems here, Dimick takes a different tack:
“Dimick believes in criminal justice reform — like ensuring that judges make decisions that are equal and consistent for everyone — but she said that concerns of mass incarceration in the state are overblown.
“There are people running around shouting about high incarceration rates,” Dimick said. “Not in Minnesota. They are talking about other places in the country.”
Dimick pointed out Minnesota has the fourth lowest incarceration rate of all U.S. states and that the people who are put in prison in Minnesota belong in prison.”
Never better exemplified than by the closing of the Hennepin County Home School in Glen Lake: Instead we are putting kids with gun and violence violations back into the environment where they found trouble in the first place with marginal corrective support. Daunte Wright as Exhibit A: If he were sentenced to a high school diploma at the Home School he would still be alive and the community safer.
Put the people in prison eho need to be locked up
Divert those who can safely kept out
Should be easy to agree on
The hard part is figuring out who is whom
What’s wrong with incarcerating felons who possess guns. This doesn’t help solve the problem? Yes it does. It gets them off the street for 5 years. If they don’t spend those years figuring out how to turn their lives around and re-offend when they get out, no problem. They get an automatic 5 more years the next time they screw up.
We are being terrorized by a small number of people who are not being held accountable. Fix that, and you fix the problem.
You don’t work with teen or young offenders, do you.
I agree some need serious time and sometime coming in at a lower level so they get help is also warranted. However, most don’t have great critical thinking skills, they don’t think they will get caught and have usually co occurring disorders or impulsive tendencies. Programming in prison is not mandated, so then they get out and we as tax payers pay for them all over again, including their medical care.
At any rate, she is not my first, second or third choice for the office.
How do you see the circumstances of Daunte Wright: possession of a firearm in a public place, fleeing the police and a protective order against him by a woman: Should he have been off the street? Would the likelihood of another violation be reduced by detention and “programming”? We know for certain that the risk of any further violations against the general public while being detained is zero. I took a look at a description of the youth detention facility in Red Wing and they offer:
Aggression Replacement Training®
The Phoenix Curriculum
Peer Relationships
Trauma and Grief Component Therapy for Adolescents (TGCTA)
Individual recreation/leisure planning
Mental health counseling
Chemical health education and counseling
Juvenile Sex Offender Treatment Program
Academic/vocational courses
Work experience
Transition/community reentry
Health/dental
Recreation/leisure
Volunteers/mentors
Religion/spirituality
Seems a better opportunity than immediately releasing back into the environment where they found trouble initially, which tells me we need more of this not less.
The job is DA not social worker.
Her history shows she does not know how to lead people.
A vote for her is a vote for less accountability for criminal behavior. She repeats the failed ideas of county prosecutors in San Francisco and LA.
More carjackings, more assaults, more shootings, more murder.
Deterrence and consequences need to be restored.
Businesses are shutting down every week in the city, people are moving out of Hennepin County, hospitals taking gunfire, people being abducted and tortured, women being molested on the street, people afraid to go out. Kids shot on their bicycles, or trampolines, or eating a McDonalds meal. It was not like this before the riots.
Police afraid to do their job, other police quitting, and no one taking a job that has been made nearly impossible by ungrateful people who have been protected by them every day of their lives.
People with the means will leave the city. Laptop workers will work remotely and not return downtown. Entrepreneurs won’t start businesses and provide jobs to people. The tax base will implode.
Crooks know they have the upper hand now and you want someone who sympathizes with predators in office? If you are not afraid in the city you are not paying attention.
The riots and a failure of leadership, not the pandemic unleashed lawlessness that has not been restored.
She clearly won’t hold criminals accountable. If you threaten violence or commit acts of violence you need to be incarcerated. They had their chance, what about the victims?
Protecting citizens lives and property is the number one responsibility of government. She neither has the character, the ability or the realistic mindset to do it.