MINNEAPOLIS — In a 52-page court filing, the defense attorney for Minnesota State Trooper Ryan Londregan wrote that the prosecution's hand-picked use-of-force expert believes Londregan did not commit a crime when he fatally shot Ricky Cobb during a traffic stop in July 2023.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty charged Londregan with 2nd-degree murder in Cobb's death on the shoulder of I-94 despite the opinion expressed by expert witness Jeffrey Noble, attorney Chris Madel wrote in his filing. Now, Madel is staging a legal battle to ensure they receive all the documentation related to Noble’s opinion.
“A reasonable officer in Trooper Londregan’s position would have perceived that Trooper [Brett] Seide was in danger of death or great bodily harm, specifically from being dragged by the vehicle as it continued to accelerate,” Madel quoted Noble as telling seven members of the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office on Oct. 13, 2023, after they began reviewing the case.
Noble, a former police officer from California, is a national use-of-force expert who often testifies for prosecutors. The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office retained him for their manslaughter case against former officer Jeronimo Yanez in the death of Philando Castile. In that case, Noble testified that Yanez’s use of force was unreasonable in the traffic stop shooting, but the jury disagreed and acquitted Yanez in the 2017 trial.
In the Londregan case, Moriarty publicly wrote on Sep. 2023, “We have already identified a use-of-force expert – the type of expert who examines evidence in nearly every case where an officer uses force. Their independent review is a critical part of our process. We selected this expert even before we received the completed investigation so that we could move forward with our work immediately upon receipt of the file.”
But when Moriarty filed charges against Londregan in January, any mention of a force expert’s opinion was absent from the criminal complaint.
When asked about it, Moriarty said, “We were able to determine that charges were appropriate without the use of an expert.”
Instead, Moriarty focused on the training the state troopers received when explaining her decision to charge.
“They are not allowed to shoot at a car that is driving away. They are not allowed to shoot someone to prevent a car from driving away. They’re only allowed to use deadly force if it will prevent great bodily harm or death to their partner or somebody else,” Moriarty said in January. “The training they received, very extensive training by the State Patrol was that shooting someone was not likely to stop the person to stop the person from driving. So shooting someone was not an appropriate or necessary use of deadly force in this situation.”
In October, however, Noble told Moriarty’s team that Trooper Londregan’s use of force was reasonable to prevent his partner from being dragged by Cobb’s vehicle, according to the court filing by his defense team.
“Mr. Noble offered that, if Trooper Londregan shot Mr. Cobb simply to prevent him from fleeing, he would deem the use of force to be unreasonable. However, Mr. Noble stated that his opinion would change if Trooper Londregan shot Mr. Cobb because he feared for Trooper Seide’s safety,” a statement received by the defense from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said.
That summary of that conversation between Noble and the Hennepin County Attorneys office is referred to in the court filing as “October 13 Noble Statement,” and is quoted throughout the memorandum written by defense attorney Madel.
Madel wrote in his filing that the October 13 statement indicates “certain HCAO representatives attempted to persuade Noble to change his opinion to support a decision to prosecute.”
The defense attorney also wrote in the memorandum that during the Oct. 13 conversation, Moriarty’s team argued to Noble that Londregan should have instead done nothing or encouraged Trooper Seide to remove himself from Cobb’s vehicle.
“Mr. Noble opined that, in this case, a reasonable officer in Trooper Londregan’s position would have viewed the threat to Trooper Seide to be real. Mr. Noble stated, ‘The danger was not hypothetical,’” an excerpt from the October 13 Noble Statement read.
Noble was prepared to offer his opinion that Trooper Seide should not have reached into Cobb’s car or attempted to pull Cobb out, according to the memorandum. But Noble explained that even if Trooper Seide’s actions were unreasonable and put himself in danger, “Trooper Londregan still was authorized to reasonably respond to the danger to Trooper Seide.”
When asked for a reaction to the memorandum, a spokesman for the Hennepin County Attorney's office released a statement refuting the position of Londregan's team.
"It is simply false that any expert engaged by the State came to any legal conclusion related to Mr. Londregan’s conduct. In fact, the expert characterized the meeting as a preliminary discussion with the State. Once again the defense is abusing the legal process to initiate inaccurate pretrial publicity in this case," wrote HCAO spokesman Nicholas Kimball.
"The defense has selectively quoted a partial sentence of a lengthy document provided to them in the course of the confidential discovery process. The cherry-picked sentence excludes critical facts where the expert acknowledged information he would need to fully analyze the case," Kimball continued. "Specifically, he stated that he did not know the new use of force legal standard in Minnesota or how to interpret it and he did not have a statement from Trooper Londregan. Additionally, he did not have the information from the three months of investigation that occurred after this initial conversation, including grand jury transcripts detailing the extensive training that Londregan received on how to effectively and safely handle traffic stops involving potential fleeing drivers."
The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association (MPPOA) had a far different view on the legal proceedings and the contents of Monday's court filing.
“The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office hired an expert to educate them, the Court, and the jury. That expert - who was also formerly used to prosecute other Minnesota police officers - found Trooper Ryan (Londregan) acted lawfully to save his partner. Now, Moriarty’s office is disregarding and trying to hide that truth from the public," wrote MPPOA Executive Director Brian Peters. "This is what happens in a political prosecution. Trooper Ryan is a hero who saved his partner’s life. Anyone who cares about the rule of law needs to care about this case – it’s an unjust prosecution. How many more folded flags need to go to families of law enforcement?”
MPPOA also stated that the court filings make it clear Moriarty was determined to charge Londregan with a crime and no one, even an expert secured by her office, was going to get in the way.
Motions from both the state and defense will be argued at a court hearing March 21.
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