Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty on Monday called for a 15-year-old murder conviction to be vacated after a new review of the evidence points to the innocence of the man imprisoned for the crime.
Edgar Barrientos-Quintana was convicted in 2009 for the murder of 18-year-old Jesse Mickelson during a drive-by shooting in south Minneapolis, in which Mickelson was a bystander. Members of Mickelson’s family joined Moriarty at the Monday news conference, calling for the release of Barrientos-Quintana and apologizing to his family for having to be without their family member for more than a decade.
“It’s been 16 years, but I would rather have no conviction than the wrong conviction,” said Tina Rosebear, Mickelson’s sister. “I want to apologize, most importantly, because I held a lot of anger for a man that had nothing to do with it and it hurts to know that we were failed because of a wrong conviction.”
The calls for Barrientos-Quintana’s release come less than two months after the Conviction Review Unit (CRU) housed within Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office concluded a three-year investigation into the conviction and trial. The unit’s report released in late July found a “confluence of errors made by criminal justice system actors (that) resulted in a wrongful conviction.”
Moriarty’s office filed a brief on Monday agreeing the conviction should be vacated, and pledged to immediately drop the charges against Barrientos-Quintana if the conviction is overturned, she said.
“We are hopeful that the court will give Mr. Barrientos-Quintana the relief he deserves, but this is a sad day all around,” Moriarty told reporters. “Our legal system failed Mr. Barrientos-Quintana. Our legal system also failed Jesse’s family, who almost 16 years later, must again wonder who killed their loved one.”
The CRU found security footage from a Cub Foods in the Maplewood area showing Barrientos-Quintana at the grocery store 33 minutes before the shooting, which occurred in Minneapolis. Phone data – which was not shown to the jury during the trial – also corroborated Barrientos-Quintana’s claim that he was at his girlfriend’s apartment during the time of the shooting, placing him at the Maplewood home 27 minutes after the shooting.
According to CRU investigators, the combination of the phone records and security footage make it impossible for Barrientos-Quintana to have driven to Minneapolis to commit the crime then back again within that time frame.
There was no physical evidence tying Barrientos-Quintana to the crime, including the lack of DNA evidence and the absence of the gun used in the shooting, which was never found, according to the report. Witnesses also described the shooter as having a “shiny” or closely shaved bald head, but the security footage just before the shooting showed Barrientos-Quintana with a thick head of dark hair, which he still had in the arrest photo taken 11 days after the shooting.
Photo lineups used by Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) investigators featured an old photo of Barrientos-Quintana with a shaved head. The report also says MPD investigators used coercive interrogation techniques, threatening witnesses with prosecution and pressuring others to name Barrientos-Quintana as the shooter despite identifying someone else as the shooter early on.
The case was also featured in an episode of the television show “First 48,” which follows homicide investigators as they try to solve cases – often within 48 hours – that aired less than one month before the trial. The CRU report says the involvement of the show contributed to the wrongful conviction due to witnesses watching the episode, which showed edited footage of Barrientos-Quintana’s arrest and interrogation, before testifying, and prosecutors having access to scripted comments made by a lead investigator during the episode long before the defense.
The MPD detective on the case, Chris Gaiters, is now the department’s Assistant Chief of Community Trust, and current Hennepin County Judge Hilary Caligiuri prosecuted the case. Susan Crumb, another former prosecutor on the case, sent a memo to Moriarty’s office saying she still believes Barrientos-Quintana to be guilty and that the CRU report is acting off of confirmation bias.
Due to the potential conflicts of interest, Moriarty said the chief judge of Hennepin County District Court asked the state Supreme Court to assign the case to a judge outside of the county. She said the case now lies with a retired Anoka County judge, who has 90 days to make a decision on whether to overturn the conviction.
Mohamed Ibrahim
Mohamed Ibrahim is MinnPost’s environment and public safety reporter. He can be reached at mibrahim@minnpost.com.
