Top Minnesota Officials at Odds Over Pardons

ST. PAUL, Minn. (CN) — Minnesota’s process for granting pardons has been thrown into turmoil by a dispute between its governor, attorney general and Supreme Court chief justice over a district court order declaring parts of the process unconstitutional.

In a remote hearing early Thursday afternoon, attorneys for all three officials and for a woman seeking a pardon for the killing of her abusive husband walked through their positions with Judge Laura Nelson of Ramsey County District Court in the state capital.

The hearing was precipitated by a series of letters between Democratic Governor Tim Walz, Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison and Chief Justice Lorie Gildea, a Republican appointee. The three make up the Minnesota Board of Pardons, which Gildea, writing on June 15, told Walz and Ellison that she believed a June 21 meeting of the Board of Pardons, which grants and denies pardons to petitioners from around the state at biennial meetings, should be postponed.

“Applicants seeking pardons deserve thoughtful consideration and finality when they come before the Board,” Gildea wrote. “The same is true for victims and family members. Setting aside the legal arguments that will be part of an appeal, I know you agree that we must act in the best interests of those who come before the Board. In my view, that means that the Board should not meet until the appellate process is completed.”

She added that she was wary of appearing improper by appearing at the meeting.

“For the Chief Justice to appear and participate in a meeting of the Pardon Board, when the district court has declared some of the statutes under which the Board operates unconstitutional, risks undermining the people’s confidence in the district court,” she wrote.

Walz and Ellison did not agree. Each penned their own letter, with Walz excoriating the chief justice for putting off hearings for 34 pardon applicants at the last minute.

“Your position is unfounded, and it is also directly harmful to the applicants who have a right to have their applications heard in a timely manner,” Walz wrote on June 17. “The June 21 meeting has been scheduled for months. The Court issued its order in April. We made our proposal in May. You did not respond to our proposal but instead asserted that the meeting could not go forward,” he added, referencing a plan to grant unanimous pardons, deny pardons which a majority of the Board voted against and simply defer other applications until after the appeal.

Underlying the dispute is the case of Amreya Shefa, who was convicted of first-degree manslaughter in 2014 for the 2013 stabbing death of Habibi Tesema. Tesema, who brought Shefa and their two children to the U.S. from Ethiopia in 2012, imprisoned her and regularly raped her in the family’s home in the southern Minneapolis suburb of Richfield. Hennepin County Judge Elizabeth Cutter found that Shefa had killed Tesema in self-defense but had used excessive force, and declined to convict her of second-degree murder in a bench trial.

After the end of her five-year prison term, Shefa was remanded to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which plans to deport her. A permanent resident and a citizen of Ethiopia, Shefa has since been released on bond, but federal officials have sought to bring her back into custody, according to her attorney Andy Crowder, of local firm Blackwell and Burke.

A finding by the Eighth Circuit that Shefa had the right to a hearing to contest deportation has put her immigration case on hold before the Board of Immigration Appeals, he added.

“It’s giving me serious heartburn,” Crowder said of Shefa’s immigration case. “We’re looking at the possibility of Ms. Shefa being removed from the country. Months, maybe years.”

A pardon could have turned those proceedings sharply in Shefa’s favor, but her petition was met with a no vote from Gildea. That led to the suit before Nelson, in which attorneys for Shefa argued that the Minnesota Constitution placed pardon power in the hands of the governor, separate from the Board of Pardons, which was established by a later amendment. That amendment granted the power to “the Governor in conjunction with the Board of Pardons,” and assistant attorneys general representing Ellison and Gildea argued that it meant to take away the governor’s individual power.

Nelson partially agreed with Walz and Shefa, finding that only one portion of two statutes since passed to govern pardons was unconstitutional: that requiring a unanimous vote of the board. She denied Shefa’s request for an order requiring Walz to reconsider her denied pardon along with Walz’ request to grant her a pardon nunc pro tunc after invalidating Gildea’s effective veto.

The parties went back before Nelson on Thursday. Gildea retained new counsel, Scott Flaherty of Taft Law Firm, jettisoning her representation by Ellison’s office. At the hearing, attorneys for all four parties negotiated with Nelson regarding whether and how the district judge should enter judgment in Shefa’s case.

“The way I looked at summary judgment, I found that the plaintiffs and Governor Walz were essentially asking for two things. One was an order declaring the unanimity aspect of the statute to be unconstitutional, and the second was an affirmative pass forward in terms of the pardon process,” Nelson said, setting the stage. “And obviously the attorney general and the chief justice were looking for relief pointed in the opposite direction.”

She didn’t, she said, “grant summary judgment on the ‘and so then, let’s do this’ aspect of it,” leading to the standoff and subsequent hearing.

“We’d like some guidance on how the pardon process can go forward,” Crowder said. “We certainly didn’t bring this case to shut down the pardon process. We don’t think your decision should shut down the pardon process.” He argued that since only portions of the statute had been found unconstitutional, the pardon process could go forward.

Walz’s counsel, Barry Landy of Mineapolis firm Ciresi Conlin, agreed.

“My client’s present view is, there are things that the board can do, but so long as [the statutes] have been struck from the books, that creates uncertainty,” Flaherty said. “It creates ethical issues…. It’s not enough for her to avoid acting improperly. She has to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”

“I do think it’s in everyone’s interest statewide… to have a final, complete resolution of the constitutional question as soon as possible,” he said, a position agreed to by all parties.

Nelson ultimately agreed to amend her order with clarification on its impact on the pardon board as a draft for further discussion next week.

Speaking later, Crowder noted that Shefa’s pardon was up for review at the June 21 meeting.

“That was one of the most disappointing things about this week,” he said.

She is also applying for T Nonimmigrant Status, a visa offered to victims of human trafficking, for which Crowder said she was recommended by Judge Cutter. Shefa has said that her status as an HIV-positive Muslim would put her at risk of torture and death in Christian-majority Ethiopia.

“At the end of the day, it’s just disappointing. You know, the government’s supposed to work for the people, and in this case it’s just a case where it’s not,” Crowder said. “The legislature could have created a statute that just said ‘all pardons need to be in writing,’ and just ignored the unanimity requirement. If that was the case, we wouldn’t be in the place we’re in now.”

“I just don’t understand the chief justice’s position,” he added.

Categories / Civil Rights, Government, Politics

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Top Minnesota Officials at Odds Over Pardons

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