(Originally published in American Thinker.)
In Minneapolis, a progressive district attorney prosecuted and convicted a police officer of vehicular homicide and later dropped all charges against the perp he was chasing related to the death of an innocent bystander. It’s an example of how leftist prosecutors and judges are perverting the law to make the innocent guilty and guilty innocent.
It also shows why such extreme leftist prosecutors need to be removed from office. They aren’t doing their jobs. They are furthering their agendas.
In 2021, James Jeremiah Jones-Drain stole a car and fled police, which led to Leneal Frazier being killed in the resulting car chase. Jones-Drain fled the scene and was not arrested at the time.
Fox 9 reported that Police Officer Brian Cummings pursued Jones-Drain at speeds that reached 100 mph. During this pursuit Cummings’s vehicle collided with Frazier’s car at an intersection.
“After hitting the first vehicle, the squad car went into the southbound lane and struck a second uninvolved vehicle. Frazier’s car was pushed into a nearby bus shelter,” according to Fox News. “He died at the hospital a short time later.”
The fatal accident allowed Jones-Drain to escape, although he was subsequently arrested in January 2023. He was scheduled to go on trial on Aug. 28, but just days before, the prosecutor asked that the charges be dismissed “due to an inability to prove all of the charges beyond a reasonable doubt at this time.”
The prosecutor in this instance is the County Attorney in Hennepin County, which, Mary Moriarty. During her election campaign, she had received a lot of support from progressive groups, some of which were far left. Her time in office has led to soft-on-crime reputation.
Jones-Drain may not have hit Frazier’s vehicle, but he was the reason for the pursuit in the first place.
It doesn’t seem like Moriarty’s prosecutors tried too hard to convict the criminal. They were more interested in going after Cummings, who prosecutors charged with second-degree manslaughter and criminal vehicular homicide. Cummings pleaded guilty to criminal vehicular homicide in April 2023. He was sentenced to less than a year in jail. Given the pleading and the sentence, it seems apparent that it was the result of a deal.
Cummings’s lawyer Tom Plunkett told Fox 9, “Mr. Cummings risked his life many times to protect people. He sits in jail. Mr. Jones-Drain, a gun toting thief, who bears responsibility for the death of Leneal Frazier, and stole from the innocent gets a break? Minneapolis is a better place to be a criminal than a law enforcement officer.”
While Jones-Drain still faces the original charges of robbery, being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm, and others. So, if there’s any justice, he still may be sent to prison.
However, justice doesn’t appear to flourish in Hennepin County when the criminal, who it can be argued was responsible for the accident because he was fleeing police, goes free, and the police officer who was trying to enforce the laws is sent to prison.
Michael A. Letts is the CEO and Founder of In-VestUSA, a national grassroots non-profit organization helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs.
