The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office urged Minnesota’s Board of Pardons to reject convicted child sex offender Tou Lue Vang’s request for clemency — and, in doing so, shed new light on why he never spent a day behind bars.
“We do not support a pardon,” prosecutors wrote, according to a newly obtained document.
Despite that, the Minnesota Board of Pardons — consisting of Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and Chief Justice Natalie Hudson — voted unanimously to grant the pardon.
Weeks later, the Trump administration announced that Vang had been deported from the United States after Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked his legal status.
The document also offers insight into why Vang, who pleaded guilty to repeatedly sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl over a two-and-a-half-year period, never served a single day in prison. Instead, Vang was placed on probation for 30 years in 2006.
Prosecutors wrote that the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office agreed to a reduced sentence because the child victim was under pressure from her own family to not cooperate with the case.
“We offered a dispositional departure in this case because the victim, then 12 years old, was experiencing pressure from her family to not cooperate,” wrote Tami McConkey, director of the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office’s Victim, Witness and Postconviction Justice Division.
Prosecutors told the Clemency Review Commission that Vang’s crime involved “several aggravating factors,” including that the victim was only 10 years old when the abuse began, the abuse involved multiple forms of sexual assault, there were repeated assaults in her own home over a two-and-a-half-year period, Vang used no sexual protection, and in one case he drove the girl to his home and sexually abused her there.
Prosecutors also urged commissioners and the Board of Pardons to review the presentence investigation report “to understand more about the victim’s circumstances.”
Prosecutors question Vang’s remorse
In defense of the pardon, Walz has frequently pointed to the victim’s letter of forgiveness and Vang’s expressions of remorse.
While acknowledging that Vang wrote about the impact his conviction had on his own family, Ramsey County prosecutors noted that he expressed no comparable concern for the 10-year-old girl he repeatedly sexually abused.
“While Mr. Vang expresses shame and regret about what his children experience when they learn of the offense, he does not share any thoughts or insight about what the victim must have gone through,” the document states.
As Alpha News previously reported, the victim’s letter was not included in the publicly released version of Vang’s pardon application.
Instead, it was later provided to media outlets by the Walz administration after the pardon drew widespread criticism.
According to the criminal complaint, Vang later married the victim’s sister, making the victim a member of his extended family.
Walz recently defended his pardon of the child sex offender when questioned by a reporter following Vang’s deportation.
“Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day,” Walz said.
Jenna Gloeb
Jenna Gloeb is an Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist, media producer, public speaker, and screenwriter. Most recently, she worked as a reporter and on-air host for CCX Media. Jenna is a Minnesota native and resides in the Twin Cities with her husband, son, daughter, and two dogs.
