Search Results for: noor
October 21, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Having covered the 2019 trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor for the murder of Justine Ruskcyk Damond, I attended Noor’s resentencing this morning by Hennepin County District Judge Kathryn Quaintance. When I say “covered,” I mean every day from inside the courtroom at a seat behind Justine’s family that I snagged when the New York Times proved a no-show. Resentencing was necessitated by the Minnesota Supreme Court decision
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September 15, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Minnesota Supreme Court has reversed former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor’s conviction for third-degree murder in the case of Justine Ruszczyk or Justine Damond as I referred to her in my reporting. The reversal came in a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice Lorie Gildea. It is a good opinion that persuades me on an issue I have changed my mind about a few times. The Court’s ruling leaves
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February 1, 2021 — Scott Johnson
I covered the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor for the murder of Justine Ruszczyk over three weeks in 2019. Ms. Ruszczyk had called the police to intervene in what she thought might be an assault occurring behind her house late on the evening of July 15, 2017. Noor killed Ms. Ruszcyk when she ran up to the officer’s patrol car as it stopped at the end of
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June 9, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Arriving on the tenth floor of the Hennepin County Government Center for the sentencing of Mohamed Noor on Friday morning, one could see that Somali supporters of the defendant constituted the vast majority of those turning out. The line of Somali supporters going through tenth floor security for the hearing was so long at 8:30, a half hour before the hearing, that I was asked to go to another floor
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June 7, 2019 — Steven Hayward
This week’s two-part episode features our own Scott Johnson reporting on the verdict today in the Mohammed Noor case, and then we shift focus dramatically, talking with Prof. Joshua Dunn of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and Matthew Peterson, vice president for educational programs at the Claremont Institute, about the latest bitter internecine fight on the right about “David Frenchism.” I didn’t know this was even a thing,
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June 7, 2019 — Scott Johnson
This morning’s sentencing hearing in the case of former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor was an emotionally devastating affair. Cameras in the courtroom captured much of the drama in the victim impact statements, the defendant’s statement to the court, and Judge Quaintance’s pronouncement of conviction and sentence. The Star Tribune has a decent narrative account here. I have embedded all the videos I could find from the hearing below. I
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June 7, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Following an emotionally devastating hearing including victim impact statements and a related video of the victim’s family and friends, Hennepin County District Judge Quaintance sentenced former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor to 150 months in prison for the third-degree murder of Justine Ruszczyk (Damond). Judge Quaintance rejected the defendant’s arguments in favor a dispositional or durational departure as unsupported by any relevant legal argument. She specifically rejected the therapeutic options
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June 7, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The sentencing of former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor for killing Justine Ruszczyk (Damond) is set for this morning at 9:00 a.m. before Judge Kathryn Quaintance. Minnesota operates under a set of sentencing guidelines that indicate presumptive sentences for a given conviction. (The current sentencing guidelines and commentary are accessible here.) Noor’s presumptive sentence for third-degree murder is about 12.5 years. Noor’s attorneys have asked for a sentence including no
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May 12, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The New York Times went in pursuit of the racial angle in the case against former Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor for the July 2017 killing of Justine Ruszczyk in John Eligon’s “A Black Officer, a White Woman, a Rare Murder Conviction. Is It ‘Hypocrisy,’ or Justice?” The premise of Eligon’s story is that Noor was somehow the victim of racial prejudice. Although the premise of the story is framed
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May 2, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Here are a few notes on the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor that ended in his conviction for murder and manslaughter on Tuesday: Judge Kathryn Quaintance Judge Quaintance is a former prosecutor; her rulings at trial tended to favor the prosecution. The defense sought to introduce evidence of the effects of “trauma” on the perception of Officers Harrity and Noor. She demanded that such testimony be based
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May 1, 2019 — Scott Johnson
I have a few stray thoughts on the trial of former Minneapolis Police Mohamed Noor that I may collect in a subsequent post. For the moment, however, I would like to direct interested readers to KARE11 reporter Lou Raguse’s interview with one of the Noor jurors. Lou’s interview is posted here. If you followed the trial through my series, these comments from the juror may ring a bell: I think
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April 30, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Scott was still out of breath when I caught up with him just after he arrived home from the courthouse after the verdict in the Noor trial, but I prevailed on him to sit down and record a quick 15-minute special edition of the Power Line podcast. I managed to get Scott to extend his thoughts a bit beyond his Joe Friday-style “just-the-fact-ma’am” news coverage of the trial here on
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April 30, 2019 — Scott Johnson
As of 3:36 this afternoon we received notice that the jury has reached a verdict in the case against Mohamed Noor. Having returned so soon — following ten hours of deliberation — in a case with three charges, I thought the jury was likely to have arrived at a verdict of acquittal. On the contrary, however, while Noor was acquitted of the second-degree murder charge, the jury convicted Noor of
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April 30, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The prosecution briefly called its two experts back to the stand on rebuttal. Prosecutor Amy Sweasy and defense counsel Tom Plunkett made their closing arguments. Judge Quaintance instructed the jury. Without a break for lunch, Judge Quaintance then told the jury at 2:00 p.m. that the case is in their hands. Sequestered for deliberations, the jury now considers the two murder and one manslaughter charge against Mohamed Noor. The Star
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April 27, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The prosecution concluded its cross-examination of Mohamed Noor. The defense called its expert witness on police practices, Emanuel Kapelsohn and called two fact witnesses — neighbors of Justine — to testify to the noise they heard in the alley (formerly a “slap,” now characterized as a “loud bang”) preceding the shot in the alley behind their houses on the evening of July 15, 2017. The defense rested its case with
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April 25, 2019 — Scott Johnson
I inferred that Mohamed Noor was going to testify on his own behalf from defense counsel Peter Wold’s opening statement, but his intentions remained unclear. This morning we learned that Noor was going to take the stand, as indeed he did when prosecution expert Timothy Longo concluded his testimony and the prosecution rested its case. I have to leave early for court tomorrow morning. I am filing this special edition
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April 25, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Since Justine Ruszczyk (Damond) was killed by Mohamed Noor on July 15, 2017, the Minneapolis mayor and chief of police have been sacked, the chief by the mayor and the mayor by the voters. Justine’s killing opened a window onto Minneapolis’s kakistocracy. The case hasn’t drawn much national attention, apparently because the victim was a white woman and the shooter is a black Somali immigrant. The usual polarities are reversed,
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