Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison served as a keynote speaker at a University of California, Berkeley Law School training in November which sought to help prosecutors from all over the country “effectively prosecute police officers accused of using excessive force.”
The Prosecutors Alliance of California, Berkeley’s Criminal Law & Justice Center and Berkeley’s International Human Rights Law Clinic organized and hosted the three-day training. The event was called “Prosecution of Law Enforcement Misconduct.”
The Prosecutors Alliance was founded in part by Chesa Boudin, a former district attorney for San Francisco. In 2022, Boudin was removed from office by the left-wing voters of San Francisco amid rising crime and strong backlash to his policies. According to the Daily Caller, during his time as district attorney, Boudin released repeat offenders, was accused of refusing to prosecute crime, and let 40% of San Francisco’s jail population out over fears of a potential COVID-19 outbreak in the jail.
Boudin has a long family history of left-wing and Marxist ideology. Furthermore, his parents served a combined 62 years in prison for their roles in the murder of two police officers and a security guard in 1981. Boudin’s mother was eventually paroled, and his father received a commutation from former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat.
Currently, Boudin serves as the founding executive director of Berkeley’s Criminal Law & Justice Center; another organizer of the three-day training.
At this event, participants and speakers discussed “police use-of-force policy and practice, investigation techniques and evidence challenges, appropriate use of expert witnesses, lessons learned from recent prosecutions, and communications and transparency in high-profile cases.”
Attorney General Ellison was presumably asked to be a keynote speaker at this event because of his office’s recent history of prosecuting police officers.
Under requests from Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Ellison has taken criminal cases against police officers out of the hands of local county attorneys and used his office to prosecute those officers. Both the trial of Derek Chauvin and the trial of Kim Potter were prosecuted by Ellison’s office.
In recent years, left-wing prosecutors have been elected all across the country. In Minnesota, Mary Moriarty won the 2022 election to become Hennepin County Attorney. Since then, Moriarty has declined to prosecute certain criminal cases, sought lenient criminal sentences, and generated significant backlash.
Ellison supported Moriarty in her run for Hennepin County Attorney.
Luke Sprinkel
Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
