Star Tribune
Minnesota state trooper’s defense may call use-of-force expert for testimony
A Hennepin County judge has approved a defense request to subpoena an independent use-of-force expert consulted in the murder case against a Minnesota state trooper, but denied a flurry of other evidentiary motions they raised.
Judge Tamara Garcia ruled that Trooper Ryan Londregan’s attorneys made a “plausible argument” that reports, meetings notes and other draft documents produced by the expert, Jeffrey Noble, are relevant to the defense’s case and that he should be allowed to testify.
For weeks, both parties have argued over what, if any, information the defense is entitled to from Noble, a retired deputy police chief from Irvine, Calif. retained by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty during the charging review process.
Noble’s preliminary opinions sparked controversy after court records revealed that he had opined to prosecutors that Londregan acted reasonably to protect his partner when he shot and killed motorist Ricky Cobb II during a traffic stop last summer.
“The danger was not hypothetical,” Noble observed, according to a two-page summary of the virtual meeting between Noble and Moriarty’s staff on Oct. 13, 2023. However, Noble asked for more time to review the case and “refrained from offering an ultimate opinion” on whether lethal force was justified, the memo states.
Moriarty did not wait on his final report. She charged Londregan, 27, with second-degree murder, manslaughter and assault, two days before dismissing Noble from further work on the case.
Since then, the defense has sought to verify Noble’s statements by requesting that he hand over any records, notes or communications on Londregan since his first contact with Moriarty’s office. Prosecutors quickly moved to quash the subpoena last month, arguing that it was “extremely overbroad and burdensome.”
In her 17-page order, Garcia noted that Noble has not objected to the subpoena, nor has the state provided any information about the burden to him.
“Londregan has also made the plausible argument that the documents are relevant to his defense, even if the materials are not dispositive to the case,” Garcia wrote in her April 3 ruling. She went on to say that compliance of the subpoena “is not unreasonable under the totality of the circumstances.”
Garcia denied five defense motions seeking to compel various categories of discovery materials from Moriarty’s office regarding Noble, including all text and email communications between him and members of her staff.
Such administrative correspondence is protected as “work product” under the law, Garcia ruled, and therefore not required to be disclosed by the state. She did, however, order that prosecutors turn over all external communications with the media — such as public press releases — as well as a list of every individual interviewed in connection with the case.
Londregan’s attorneys hoped to depose Noble ahead of the upcoming omnibus hearing on April 29. But Garcia denied that request, citing court rules saying that a deposition may only be ordered when there is “reasonable probability that the witness will be unavailable to testify at trial.”
“[The defense] has not shown that Noble is unavailable to testify at either a hearing or trial,” she wrote,” she said, according to the recently filed order. “Indeed, all input from the parties indicates that Noble is alive, in good health, and perfectly willing to fly to Minnesota if subpoenaed or retained as an expert witness… The fact that Noble lives in California does not make him unavailable.”
Noble has provided expert testimony in previous police killing cases in Minnesota, including George Floyd and Philando Castile. He was most recently consulted last year in a St. Paul police deadly use-of-force case, where he concluded that the officers were in “imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury” when they shot and killed 65-year-old Yia Xiong as he wielded a knife.
That analysis helped inform state Attorney General Keith Ellison and Ramsey County Attorney John Choi’s decision last month to rule the shooting justified and not charge St. Paul officer Abdirahman Dahir.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
