A Minnesota prosecutor said she declined to bring felony charges against a state official whom police said vandalized six Tesla vehicles due to “public safety” and “recidivism rates.”
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty explained Wednesday why a fiscal policy analyst under Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s administration qualified for pre-charge diversion for causing more than $21,000 in damages to Teslas. The left-leaning prosecutor dismissed mounting accusations that she is soft on crime, and asked why the community wasn’t talking about gun control instead.
“If [defendants] go through the traditional system and they have a felony conviction on their record, they are much more likely to come back and commit a new crime,” Moriarty said at a press briefing. “That is because a felony conviction destabilizes their lives, they may lose their job, lose their housing and it can just lead to future criminal activity.”
“We are very much focused on public safety,” Moriarty said. “Now … there are some people who want people to have felony convictions. That’s fine if that’s what they want, but that is not about public safety.”
Moriarty’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Minneapolis police previously released footage of the suspect, whom they said was Dylan Bryan Adams, a fiscal policy analyst for the state’s Department of Human Services. Videos appeared to show the suspect scratching and writing on the Teslas, mirroring a trend of attacks on the vehicles stemming from anger toward the vehicle company’s CEO Elon Musk’s politics.
A lawyer for Adams did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment. The attorney previously said Adams “is very remorseful for his actions and is beginning the process of making sure the victims are made whole financially.”
After answering questions about Adams’s case, Moriarty pivoted to advocate for gun restrictions, which the briefing had originally focused on.
“I think the puzzling thing about this is that that is a low-level property crime, and so why aren’t we talking about gun violence?” Moriarty told her audience. She went on to promote “extreme risk protection orders” allowing judges to revoke weapons from people they deem dangerous.
Moriarty ran for office on a platform focused on promoting alternatives to punishment in the justice system and has repeatedly been accused of giving too much leniency to criminals. Following public outrage, Gov. Walz moved in 2023 to remove Moriarty from a murder case in which she offered plea deals to juveniles charged with killing a young woman.
The lead prosecutor for a conservative-voting county in Minnesota said his office would likely have charged a suspect like Adams.
“Just so that no one gets any silly ideas in the North Metro from this story,” Anoka County Attorney Johnson said in a Wednesday Facebook post. “Offenders who commit a crime spree causing tens of thousands in damages to multiple victims will not be approved for pre-charge diversion in Anoka County. This is especially true if the lawlessness is politically motivated.”
“It makes it worse that the offender is a State employee in a position of public trust,” Johnson said.
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