Minnesota
Man charged with killing a top House Democrat pleads not guilty
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The man charged with killing the top Democrat in the Minnesota House and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife, pleaded not guilty Thursday in federal court.
Vance Boelter, 58, of Green Isle, Minnesota, was indicted July 15 on six counts of murder, stalking and firearms violations. The murder charges could carry the federal death penalty, though prosecutors say that decision is several months away.
One of Boelter’s attorneys entered the plea on Boelter’s behalf during Thursday’s arraignment. Boelter was in the courtroom and wore an orange sweatshirt and yellow pants. He spoke briefly to affirm that he understood the charges and thanked the judge.
When prosecutors announced the indictment, they released a rambling handwritten letter they say Boelter wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel in which he confessed to the June 14 shootings of Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. However, the letter doesn’t make clear why he targeted the Hortmans or Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who survived.
Boelter’s federal defender, Manny Atwal, said at the time that the weighty charges did not come as a surprise, but she has not commented on the substance of the allegations or any defense strategies.
Thursday’s hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster also served as a case management conference in which Foster issued a revised schedule with various deadlines, though no trial date has been set.
Prosecutors have moved to designate the proceedings as a “complex case” so that standard speedy trial requirements won’t apply, saying both sides will need plenty of time to review the voluminous evidence.
“The investigation of this case arose out of the largest manhunt in Minnesota’s history,” they wrote. “Accordingly, the discovery to be produced by the government will include a substantial amount of investigative material and reports from more than a dozen different law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.”
They said the evidence will include potentially thousands of hours of video footage, tens of thousands of pages of responses to dozens of grand jury subpoenas, and data from numerous electronic devices seized during the investigation.
Foster on Thursday agreed that the case is complex and excluded it from speedy trial requirements.
Boelter’s motivations remain murky. Friends have described him as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views who had been struggling to find work. Authorities said Boelter made long lists of politicians in Minnesota and other states — all or mostly Democrats.
In a series of cryptic notes to The New York Times through his jail’s electronic messaging service, Boelter suggested his actions were partly rooted in the Christian commandment to love one’s neighbor. “Because I love my neighbors prior to June 14th I conducted a 2 year long undercover investigation,” he wrote.
In messages published earlier by the New York Post, Boelter insisted the shootings had nothing to do with his opposition to abortion or his support for President Donald Trump, but he declined to elaborate.
“There is little evidence showing why he turned to political violence and extremism,” the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Joe Thompson, told reporters last month. He also reiterated that prosecutors consider Hortman’s killing a “political assassination.”
Prosecutors say Boelter was disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car early June 14 when he went to the Hoffmans’ home in the Minneapolis suburb of Champlin. He shot the senator nine times, and his wife eight times, officials said.
Boelter later went to the Hortmans’ home in nearby Brooklyn Park and killed both of them, authorities said. Their dog was so gravely injured that he had to be euthanized. Boelter surrendered the next night.
Arkansas
Death row inmates challenge new law allowing executions by nitrogen gas
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Several Arkansas death row inmates sued the state Tuesday to block a new law allowing executions by nitrogen gas, saying the measure gives prison officials unconstitutionally broad authority to decide how they should die.
Ten inmates filed the lawsuit in state court challenging the law signed this year by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Supporters have promoted the law as a way to carry out executions for the first time in eight years. Arkansas has 23 people on death row.
Arkansas hasn’t executed an inmate since 2017, when the state put four men to death before a drug used in its lethal injection process expired. The state has been unable to purchase more lethal injection drugs since because of manufacturers’ opposition to their use in executions, the attorney general’s office has said.
Attorneys for the inmates argue the law violates Arkansas’ constitution by giving the Division of Correction authority to decide whether to use lethal injection or nitrogen gas for an execution. The law is also unclear on details surrounding the use of nitrogen gas, the suit says.
Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement that his office was aware of the lawsuit and was ready to “vigorously defend” the new law.
Under the nitrogen hypoxia execution method, an inmate is forced to breathe the gas and deprived of the oxygen needed to stay alive.
Opponents say the method increases suffering, citing accounts from witnesses to Alabama executions who said inmates gasped and shook during executions. State officials say those are involuntary movements associated with oxygen deprivation.
Arkansas is the fifth state to approve nitrogen gas executions. Alabama, the first state to use nitrogen gas, has carried out five executions using the method since it began last year. Louisiana staged its first in March, putting to death a man convicted of killing a woman in 1996. Two other states — Mississippi and Oklahoma — have laws allowing the method but have not used it so far.
Alabama’s law is being challenged in federal court.
The Arkansas inmates also argue that the law cannot be applied retroactively to them, since they were sentenced to die by lethal injection. Attorneys for the inmates said the lack of details on how the state would carry out nitrogen executions raises the risk of a “gruesome and torturous execution.”
“Arkansas juries explicitly sentenced our clients to execution by lethal injection – not gas – and the General Assembly cannot rewrite those verdicts to impose death by this very different and highly problematic method,” Heather Fraley, an attorney for the inmates, said in a statement.
Arkansas’ law took effect Tuesday, and Sanders in April said she had no timeline for resuming executions and wasn’t in a rush.
Man charged with killing a top House Democrat pleads not guilty
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The man charged with killing the top Democrat in the Minnesota House and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife, pleaded not guilty Thursday in federal court.
Vance Boelter, 58, of Green Isle, Minnesota, was indicted July 15 on six counts of murder, stalking and firearms violations. The murder charges could carry the federal death penalty, though prosecutors say that decision is several months away.
One of Boelter’s attorneys entered the plea on Boelter’s behalf during Thursday’s arraignment. Boelter was in the courtroom and wore an orange sweatshirt and yellow pants. He spoke briefly to affirm that he understood the charges and thanked the judge.
When prosecutors announced the indictment, they released a rambling handwritten letter they say Boelter wrote to FBI Director Kash Patel in which he confessed to the June 14 shootings of Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark. However, the letter doesn’t make clear why he targeted the Hortmans or Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who survived.
Boelter’s federal defender, Manny Atwal, said at the time that the weighty charges did not come as a surprise, but she has not commented on the substance of the allegations or any defense strategies.
Thursday’s hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dulce Foster also served as a case management conference in which Foster issued a revised schedule with various deadlines, though no trial date has been set.
Prosecutors have moved to designate the proceedings as a “complex case” so that standard speedy trial requirements won’t apply, saying both sides will need plenty of time to review the voluminous evidence.
“The investigation of this case arose out of the largest manhunt in Minnesota’s history,” they wrote. “Accordingly, the discovery to be produced by the government will include a substantial amount of investigative material and reports from more than a dozen different law enforcement agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.”
They said the evidence will include potentially thousands of hours of video footage, tens of thousands of pages of responses to dozens of grand jury subpoenas, and data from numerous electronic devices seized during the investigation.
Foster on Thursday agreed that the case is complex and excluded it from speedy trial requirements.
Boelter’s motivations remain murky. Friends have described him as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views who had been struggling to find work. Authorities said Boelter made long lists of politicians in Minnesota and other states — all or mostly Democrats.
In a series of cryptic notes to The New York Times through his jail’s electronic messaging service, Boelter suggested his actions were partly rooted in the Christian commandment to love one’s neighbor. “Because I love my neighbors prior to June 14th I conducted a 2 year long undercover investigation,” he wrote.
In messages published earlier by the New York Post, Boelter insisted the shootings had nothing to do with his opposition to abortion or his support for President Donald Trump, but he declined to elaborate.
“There is little evidence showing why he turned to political violence and extremism,” the acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Joe Thompson, told reporters last month. He also reiterated that prosecutors consider Hortman’s killing a “political assassination.”
Prosecutors say Boelter was disguised as a police officer and driving a fake squad car early June 14 when he went to the Hoffmans’ home in the Minneapolis suburb of Champlin. He shot the senator nine times, and his wife eight times, officials said.
Boelter later went to the Hortmans’ home in nearby Brooklyn Park and killed both of them, authorities said. Their dog was so gravely injured that he had to be euthanized. Boelter surrendered the next night.
Arkansas
Death row inmates challenge new law allowing executions by nitrogen gas
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Several Arkansas death row inmates sued the state Tuesday to block a new law allowing executions by nitrogen gas, saying the measure gives prison officials unconstitutionally broad authority to decide how they should die.
Ten inmates filed the lawsuit in state court challenging the law signed this year by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Supporters have promoted the law as a way to carry out executions for the first time in eight years. Arkansas has 23 people on death row.
Arkansas hasn’t executed an inmate since 2017, when the state put four men to death before a drug used in its lethal injection process expired. The state has been unable to purchase more lethal injection drugs since because of manufacturers’ opposition to their use in executions, the attorney general’s office has said.
Attorneys for the inmates argue the law violates Arkansas’ constitution by giving the Division of Correction authority to decide whether to use lethal injection or nitrogen gas for an execution. The law is also unclear on details surrounding the use of nitrogen gas, the suit says.
Attorney General Tim Griffin said in a statement that his office was aware of the lawsuit and was ready to “vigorously defend” the new law.
Under the nitrogen hypoxia execution method, an inmate is forced to breathe the gas and deprived of the oxygen needed to stay alive.
Opponents say the method increases suffering, citing accounts from witnesses to Alabama executions who said inmates gasped and shook during executions. State officials say those are involuntary movements associated with oxygen deprivation.
Arkansas is the fifth state to approve nitrogen gas executions. Alabama, the first state to use nitrogen gas, has carried out five executions using the method since it began last year. Louisiana staged its first in March, putting to death a man convicted of killing a woman in 1996. Two other states — Mississippi and Oklahoma — have laws allowing the method but have not used it so far.
Alabama’s law is being challenged in federal court.
The Arkansas inmates also argue that the law cannot be applied retroactively to them, since they were sentenced to die by lethal injection. Attorneys for the inmates said the lack of details on how the state would carry out nitrogen executions raises the risk of a “gruesome and torturous execution.”
“Arkansas juries explicitly sentenced our clients to execution by lethal injection – not gas – and the General Assembly cannot rewrite those verdicts to impose death by this very different and highly problematic method,” Heather Fraley, an attorney for the inmates, said in a statement.
Arkansas’ law took effect Tuesday, and Sanders in April said she had no timeline for resuming executions and wasn’t in a rush.
