July 22, 2021 at 04:35PMKarl Vick/Minneapolis
The prosecutors who won a conviction for the murder of George Floyd say they are focused anew on the case of a young Black man killed by Minneapolis police in 2013. Terrance Franklin was 22 when he was shot 10 times–five times in the head–by SWAT officers in a confrontation that Franklin’s family called an execution. The officers were initially cleared of wrongdoing. In June, TIME detailed evidence that had moved the Minneapolis city council in 2020 to settle the family’s wrongful-death lawsuit, including a bystander recording that allegedly captured an officer shouting, “Come out, little n—-r, don’t go putting those hands up now!” shortly before Franklin was shot.
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“When I read the article, I was utterly shocked and appalled,” says Keith Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general whose office led the prosecution of former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin in Floyd’s murder. Interviewed on July 15 outside a northwest Minneapolis coffee shop, where he was interrupted often by well-wishers, Ellison said, “I don’t know all the evidence. I have not even listened to the tape. But I was like, ‘Wow. Wow.'”
Back in 2013, the Minneapolis police department (MPD) swiftly cleared its officers, who claimed that Franklin, a burglary suspect, was killed immediately after seizing an officer’s gun and wounding two of the five SWAT team members who confronted him in a crowded basement. The department ignored the video recorded by a bystander, the murky audio of which appears to indicate Franklin was captured and showered with racial epithets before being killed, not shot down in self-defense.
Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman has asked a state agency, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), to investigate the recording, as well as other evidence gathered for the family’s lawsuit. “Some of the stuff is kind of surprising. And intriguing,” Freeman tells TIME. “The statute of limitations never runs out on homicides. So if I have new evidence, new reliable evidence, I can reopen the case and look at it again. I don’t have that yet. This needs to be investigated.
“I mean, Terrance Franklin troubled me,” Freeman adds. “The case troubles me.”
Freeman was also the local prosecutor in 2013 and effectively cleared the five officers by taking the MPD’s investigation to a grand jury, which declined to indict. In a June 14 interview, he noted that the MPD no longer investigates itself and that grand juries (which operate in secret) no longer get police shootings. Freeman now makes the charging calls himself.
“I like to think we’ve learned some lessons,” he says. “If you saw the difference between the evaluation on Franklin and what we presented to the jury in Chauvin, I mean …”
Ellison’s state office took the lead on Chauvin after activists decried the initial handling of the case by Freeman, already awash in criticism for declining to charge two Minneapolis officers in the 2015 death of another Black man, Jamar Clark. But Freeman’s office was an equal partner in the Chauvin trial, and Ellison and Freeman, fellow Democrats who speak well of each other, say they have discussed the Franklin case.
If the BCA confirms what Freeman calls “new evidence,” he will face the delicate task of confronting the police department that brings most of his cases. But he could also pass the case to Ellison, who says, “Some of these old cases need to be looked at … some of these old cases are just appalling facts that need to be investigated, like Terrance Franklin.
“I’ve never prosecuted a cop,” the attorney general adds. “Ever. I prosecute criminals. That’s who I prosecute. And if you have any doubt about it, ask the jury who was on the Chauvin case.”
–With reporting by Mariah Espada
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