May 7, 2025 - Epoch Times
02:57
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| I believe that over the last many years we've had very sort of aggressive new prosecutors get elected into office with the promise of criminal justice reform, anti-police, and using their positions to right prior wrongs in our country related to race. | |
| Now, I think we can all acknowledge that, you know, there have been some horrific episodes in our country relating to race. | |
| I think we can also fairly acknowledge that those are largely in the past, with some exceptions. | |
| And so the idea that what this Hennepin County, Minnesota, prosecutor Mary Moriarty announced as the official policy of her department, she cast it in some wishy-washy terms, but effectively the policy is it is appropriate for prosecutors to consider race in plea deals. | |
| And so the race of the offender in the plea deals. | |
| And again, The United States Constitution bars that. | |
| Equal Protection Clause bars that. | |
| And the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that. | |
| There are almost no instances in which it's appropriate to use race in government outcomes at all, and even in most private outcomes, for that matter, but not all. | |
| And so I think it's shocking that someone would get a different plea offer. | |
| Who committed a crime, same crime, based on their race? | |
| What does that say to the victim? | |
| And what does that say to the public? | |
| We're going to be tough on certain people and not others based on their skin color, which they can't control. | |
| It's an immutable characteristic. | |
| It's also subject to scrutiny, that kind of analysis. | |
| And so what I've learned since sending a letter to the Hennepin County prosecutor about her policy, saying we're opening up an investigation into a pattern and practice of illegal race-based discrimination in Hennepin County, We have heard very troubling incidents of very lenient on crime plea agreements that appear to be racially motivated. | |
| And what I've also heard is that this sub-Rosa policy is happening in other jurisdictions as well. | |
| So, in my opinion, this is deeply troubling, and we will be investigating jurisdictions that are using race in sentencing. | |
| Because, look, there has been a time in our country, dark days, that precipitated the civil rights era, where people were treated differently because of their skin color. | |
| Black men were lynched and hung from trees. | |
| There are some dark episodes in our country, and that's what occasioned the civil rights movement. | |
| Turning that around on the other side doesn't correct the sins of the past. | |
| It simply perpetuates these wrongs against different people who don't deserve that. |
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