Amy Klobuchar helped jail teen for life, but case was flawed

But what if Myon Burrell is innocent?An Associated Press investigation into the 17-year-old 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. 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. 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. “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. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman’s office said it’s confident the correct person was convicted but it’s always open to reviewing new evidence.Assistant County Attorney Jean Burdorf, the only prosecutor left who was directly involved in the case, insists that Burrell received justice. “Certainly, he’s been through the court process, and his conviction has remained intact.”___ For years, many caught up in Burrell’s case have insisted police got the wrong person. Police later said they “made a mistake.”Well after midnight, Oliver signed a statement saying he saw Burrell standing across the street in an open lot between two houses, shooting until he emptied his weapon. “He said, ‘I couldn’t see where it was coming from.’” He later asked Oliver -- who died in a shooting in 2003 -- why he lied to police.Oliver told him, “They threatened him, kinda put it like, ‘It was your fault because you were there. As far as Arrington knows, “everybody told a lie to get time cut.” ____Like many young black men in his neighborhood, Burrell’s distrust of police came early. Less than 24 hours later, Tyesha was dead and police were desperate to find her killer.They decided early on it was Burrell, though he had not had any serious brushes with the law.In a video taken by police hours before his arrest, chief homicide detective Richard Zimmerman is seen talking to a man brought to the station following another shooting. “Not yet,” they said.One month later, the day before Burrell’s indictment, his mother was driving back to Bemidji after a prison visit. He says he believes authorities knew that he was innocent all along: “They just didn’t feel like my life was worth living.” If he had told police he was there, but had been an unwilling participant, as officers seemed to want, his nightmare might have been over by now.