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The Hennepin County Attorney's Office is getting a lot of attention for its very unusual decision to hire a D.C.-based law firm to prosecute Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan rather than handle the case itself. The office has hired four experienced litigation attorneys from Steptoe, which has more than 300 attorneys and offices around the world.
This new legal team will be deputized as special assistants in the office and will take on the significant task of getting up to speed to fully litigate this matter. This, in turn, raises a new issue in this high-profile case: the time this new team needs to be fully prepared for trial and how that will impact Londregan's right to a speedy trial.
What's likely involved in the ramp-up for trial? The new team will need a considerable amount of time to fully understand the case, including in-depth reviews of all reports, statements, transcripts, grand jury testimony, forensic reports, expert reports, police records, scientific examinations, audio and video recordings and, most important, Minnesota's laws on police use of force. Its members will also need to immerse themselves in Minnesota's rules of evidence and procedure, statutes and case law that are involved in criminal litigation. Since this will not be an easy task, the prosecution may want or need a delayed trial date for their new team to get fully prepared.
Londregan's defense team has already stated a desire for a speedy trial and will demand one at the time the procedural rules allow. Rule 6 of the Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure provides that a criminal defendant in a felony case has the right to have a jury trial within 60 days of a not-guilty plea. Which means that after Londregan pleads not guilty and demands a speedy trial, the new prosecution team will have only two months to get ready for trial.
The Attorney's Office has been working on this case for nine months, but the new team might not have even a fraction of that time to prepare themselves, their witnesses and their experts. Jury questionnaires could be going out in Hennepin County this summer while the new prosecution team is still learning the case.
A speedy trial could potentially place the new prosecution team at a severe disadvantage. In such a situation, the prosecutors could ask the court to extend the time for a trial beyond the defendant's speedy trial right of 60 days, based on a showing of "good cause." Good cause usually involves such reasons as an unavoidable delay in locating an essential witness or completing critical forensic or scientific tests. In all my 35 years of trying criminal cases in Minnesota, however, I have never heard of a judge finding "good cause" based on the prosecutor needing more time to learn the case, the applicable laws and rules. It simply has never happened.
Right now, the judge is considering Londregan's motion to dismiss the case. If the judge does not grant the motion, a jury trial could happen as early as the fall.
In the last analysis, the Attorney's Office controls how it decides to prosecute Londregan but it does not necessarily control the consequences of that decision, and the consequences of this decision might leave their team woefully unprepared.
Joe Tamburino is an attorney.
