Amy Klobuchar helped jail teen for life, but case was flawed
MINNEAPOLIS » It was a prime-time moment for Amy Klobuchar.
Standing in the glare of television lights at a Democratic presidential debate last fall, she was asked about her years as a top Minnesota prosecutor and allegations she was not committed to racial justice.
“That’s not my record,” she said, staring into the camera.
Yes, she was tough on crime, Klobuchar said, but the African American community was angry about losing kids to gun violence. And she responded.
She told a story that she has cited throughout her political career, including during her 2006 campaign for the U.S. Senate: An 11-yearold girl was killed by a stray bullet while doing homework at her dining room table in 2002. And Klobuchar’s office put Tyesha Edwards’ killer — a black teen — behind bars for life.
But what if Myon Burrell is innocent?
An Associated Press investigation into the 17-yearold case uncovered new evidence and myriad inconsistencies, raising questions about whether he was railroaded by police.
This story was produced in collaboration with American Public Media.
The AP reviewed more than a thousand pages of police records, court transcripts and interrogation tapes, and interviewed dozens of inmates, witnesses, family members, former gang leaders, lawyers and criminal justice experts.
The case relied heavily on a teen rival of Burrell’s who gave conflicting accounts when identifying the shooter, who was largely obscured behind a wall 120 feet away.
With no other eyewitnesses, police turned to multiple jailhouse snitches. Some have since recanted, saying they were coached or coerced. Others were given reduced time, raising questions about their credibility.
And the lead homicide detective offered “major dollars” for names, even if it was hearsay.
There was no gun, fingerprints, or DNA. Alibis were never seriously pursued. Key evidence has gone missing or was never obtained, including a convenience store surveillance tape that Burrell and others say would have cleared him.
Burrell, now 33, has maintained his innocence, rejecting all plea deals.
His co-defendants, meanwhile, have admitted their part in Tyesha’s death. Burrell, they say, was not even there.
For years, one of them — Ike Tyson — has insisted he was actually the triggerman. Police and prosecutors refused to believe him, pointing to the contradictory accounts in the early days of the investigation. Now, he swears he was just trying to get the police off his back.
“I already shot an innocent girl,” said Tyson, who is serving a 45-year sentence. “Now an innocent guy — at the time he was a kid — is locked up for something he didn’t do. So, it’s like I’m carrying two burdens.”
Asked for comment on the case, a Klobuchar campaign spokesperson said Burrell was tried and convicted of Tyesha’s murder twice, and the second trial occurred when Klobuchar was no longer the Hennepin County Attorney. If there was new evidence, she said, it should be immediately reviewed by the court.
Questions about the case come at a difficult time, as Klobuchar and other presidential hopefuls, including Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg, face scrutiny for their records on racial justice in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Black and brown communities were being decimated by the war on drugs, and the since-discredited “superpredator” theory prevailed, predicting that droves of poor, fatherless young men devoid of moral conscience would wreak havoc in their neighborhoods.
Democrats joined Republicans in supporting harsher policing and tougher sentencing, leading to the highest incarceration rates in the nation’s history.
Some politicians have tried to distance themselves from the period’s perceived excesses. In January, for instance, Klobuchar returned a $1,000 campaign donation from Linda Fairstein, who prosecuted New York’s infamous Central Park Five, four black teens and one Hispanic who were later exonerated in the rape of a white jogger in 1989.
While campaigning to be the top prosecutor in Minnesota’s most populous county in 1998, Klobuchar advocated for harsher penalties for juvenile offenders.
In Minnesota, allegations of gang affiliation or motive played on the fears of mostly white jurors and led to harsher sentences.
“If you were young and black, and your case was tied to gangs or drugs, it was an especially scary time,” said Mary Moriarty, a public defender in Minnesota’s Hennepin County for nearly three decades. “I do firmly believe that there were people convicted of crimes that they did not do.’
She said that the murder Burrell went down for was problematic from the start.
“In the case of Myon Burrell — where you had a really high-profile shooting of an innocent girl and you put a lot of pressure on the system to get someone to be responsible for that — I think a lot of corners were probably cut.”
In Minneapolis, soaring homicides had briefly earned the city the grim nickname “Murderapolis.” By the time Klobuchar took office in 1999, crime rates had started to drop. But tensions remained high. Tyesha’s death set off an uproar.
Police pulled out all stops, deploying more than 40 officers and gang task force members.
Despite the lack of physical evidence, they all but wrapped up their case against Burrell in four days.
Ike Tyson, 21, and Hans Williams, 23, were easy. Several people saw them roll by in their car minutes before the attack, and a 911 tip from one of their girlfriends helped seal the deal.
Burrell, then 16, was arrested only after a tip from an often-used jailhouse informant. During his lengthy legal process, Burrell hired and fired six attorneys as they failed to cross-examine witnesses, pursue alibis or challenge glaring irregularities in the investigation.