Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said she will dismiss murder and manslaughter charges against State Trooper Ryan Londregan in the shooting of motorist Ricky Cobb II last summer.
Moriarty told the Star Tribune her unexpected decision comes in response to a prosecution expert’s new analysis of scene video, combined with recent statements from Londregan’s defense attorney. In a court hearing in April, attorney Chris Madel told the court the 27-year-old trooper feared for his partner’s life because he believed the driver, Ricky Cobb III, was reaching for a gun. Moriarty said Londregan’s team had never raised this legal claim before. Prosecutors and the law enforcement expert reviewed the footage and found, as Londregan’s partner clung to the passenger’s door, Cobb moved his hand upward and “you can’t see very clearly” what he’s doing.
The expert said the video reveals “horrible, horrible, horrible” tactics displayed by the troopers, but it shows Londregan used lawful force in that moment, because he “could have shot to prevent great bodily harm or death” to his partner, Moriarty said.
“We could theoretically prosecute this and just let the jury decide,” she said. “However, we ethically can’t do that because we don’t believe at this point that we can disprove that affirmative defense.”
“This is not a situation of us backing down,” Moriarty continued. “It is a situation of recognizing that, given all the barriers that are put in place in these types of cases and the new information that came up, we just can’t ethically go forward.”
Moriarty said she plans to file the motion to dismiss Monday morning.
The case was also marked with prosecutorial shake-ups after Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Joshua Larson removed himself from the case, and was replaced by outside counsel from Steptoe LLP, a Washington D.C.-based international law firm with a contract that included an initial $1 million billing cap for their services. In a report issued Sunday, the special counsel recommended that charges be dismissed, and Moriarty said she agreed with that recommendation.
The 9-page report says that although the troopers’ tactics were flawed in their failure to de-escalate during the traffic stop, they were “not demonstrably contrary to their training.”
“Suffice it to say, the ability of the State to rebut Londregan’s justification for his use of deadly force diminished substantially in the months since he was charged. As a result, the charges can no longer be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The decision brings an unceremonious conclusion to a legal battle that has enrapt Minnesotans and tapped into the rabid politics around police use of force in America. Londregan has maintained his innocence since charges were filed in January. His fellow troopers and other law enforcement supporters arrived by the busload and packed the courthouse before several court hearings, wearing t-shirts and carrying signs calling for the charges to be dropped and Moriarty to be recalled from office. Several briefly clashed with a smaller but vocal contingent demanding justice for the Cobb before a hearing in April.
Moriarty said she has been at the center of the criticism since she announced the charges, when Madel released a video calling her “out of control.”
“Open season on law enforcement must end,” Madel said at the time. “And it’s going to end with this case.”
Moriarty, a former public defender, ran for Hennepin County’s top prosecutor job after the murder of George Floyd on a campaign that included holding police officers accountable when they break the law. In a lengthy interview Sunday, she said this case was never political for her, and she opined Londregan’s defense team, policing organizations and politicians who made comments she said were “really inappropriate, really disrespectful to the family to Ricky Cobb.”
This includes Gov. Tim Walz, who publicly expressed his concerns of the handling of the case, shortly after the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association sent his office a letter asking Walz to direct the attorney general’s office to take over the prosecution.
“The governor has never reached out to me,” she said. “I don’t recall him ever intervening in the case of anyone on behalf of the person who’s charged.”
Asked if she believed Walz was preparing to take the case from her office, Moriarty said it’s possible. “Who knows, right? And that would be tragic,” she said. “I mean, I am capable of doing my job. I am doing it here, right? It will probably have some political consequences for me, but as I’ve always said, the people didn’t elect me to make political decisions. They elected me to make courageous ethical decisions.”
The charges against Londregan stemmed from a traffic stop on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis last July, when other troopers pulled over Cobb for driving without taillights but soon learned he was wanted for violating a domestic no-contact order. Cobb, 33, didn’t follow commands to exit his vehicle and instead shifted to drive, causing the car to lurch forward as Londregan and a colleague were partly inside trying to remove him. Londregan fired his service weapon, striking Cobb twice.
Moriarty said she charged Londregan based on the evidence available at the time, and that the judge affirmed there was probable cause to proceed with the case. Her office offered for the defense to come in and talk about what Londregan will say in court on several occasions, she said, but he refused and other witnesses were uncooperative with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigation. She said the prosecution was caught off guard when Madel made comments in the courtroom about fearing Cobb was reaching for a gun.
Cobb did have a gun in the vehicle, and Moriarty said there is still no evidence he intended to grab it, but the statements caused prosecutors to reconsider the evidence through a new lens.
“They could have told us that before we charged it, they could have told us that at any time,” she said. “And that is information that we would have considered — and obviously have considered.”
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