Minnesota High Court Overturns Murder Conviction of Muslim Migrant Cop Who Killed Unarmed Pajama-Clad Woman

Given today’s political and cultural climate, it’s a wonder that this didn’t happen sooner. NBC News reported Wednesday that the Minnesota Supreme Court “reversed the third-degree murder conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor, who fatally shot a 911 caller four years ago. Noor was also convicted of second-degree manslaughter in the death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond on July 15, 2017, and that verdict still stands.” However, now he will walk free much sooner than previously expected. Why? Because racism. Because Islamophobia. Because America has lost its way.

NBC reported that “the former officer will be re-sentenced for the manslaughter conviction alone, as opposed to the 12 1/2-year penalty handed down to him in 2019 for murder. Noor is now looking at a sentence of between 41 months to 57 months for that lesser conviction, a Hennepin County Attorney’s Office spokeswoman said.” However, he could be free in a matter of weeks: “If he’s hit with a four-year manslaughter term, the former officer should be eligible for release after doing two-thirds of that time and walk free by late this year, Noor’s appellate lawyer Peter Wold said.”

Wold and Noor, who has been in prison since April 30, 2019, couldn’t be happier: “I talked to Mo this morning. It’s relief, great relief. He has a young son and it’s time they get back together.” Well, that’s great. Meanwhile, Justine Ruszczyk Damond was engaged to be married. When does her fiancé get to see her again?

Noor will soon walk free because “the high court ruled that prosecutors did not prove that Noor had acted with a ‘depraved mind, without regard for human life,’ which would be needed for the third-degree murder conviction.” The court came to this conclusion despite the fact that Damond was unarmed, and Noor shot her without warning as she approached his police car to report a crime. Even worse, “the chief justice said the court and prosecutors agree that ‘Noor’s decision to shoot a deadly weapon simply because he was startled was disproportionate and unreasonable.’”

Minnesota Chief Justice Lorie Gildea declared: “Noor’s conduct is especially troubling given the trust that citizens should be able to place in our peace officers. But the tragic circumstances of this case do not change the fact that Noor’s conduct was directed with particularity toward Ruszczyk.

Mohamed Noor is nonetheless going to walk free soon, and the ultimate reason for that is the same reason why he was a police officer in the first place. Mohamed Noor is a Somali Muslim; he was the first Somali Muslim on the Minneapolis police force. In 2016, Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges expressed her excitement about that fact: “I want to take a moment to recognize Officer Mohamed Noor, the newest Somali officer in the Minneapolis Police Department. Officer Noor has been assigned to the 5th Precinct, where his arrival has been highly celebrated, particularly by the Somali community in and around Karmel Mall.”

Hodges wasn’t excited because Mohamed Noor had the skills necessary to become a fine police officer. She was only excited because he represented a religious and ethnic group that she was anxious to court. And it became increasingly clear — as we learned about Mohamed Noor’s nervousness and jumpiness and lack of respect for women, and from his own account of events that he relayed to friends (that he was “startled” and reacted by opening fire) — that Mohamed Noor was not cut out to be a policeman. He did not have the temperament for it, and if he hadn’t killed Justine Ruszczyk Damond, he would likely have done something similar at some point.

Mohamed Noor was not competent to be a police officer. If he had not been a Somali and a Muslim, he never would have been on the force at all. Identity politics kills. If there was any lesson to be drawn from the killing of Justine Ruszczyk Damond, that was it. The city of Minneapolis was so eager to have a Somali Muslim police officer on the force that it hired a man who had been found incompetent to hold the job. Even worse, Minneapolis officials did not fire him even when he proved that he was indeed unfit to be a cop.

Now he will be freed earlier than mandated by his already light initial sentence. The injustices just pile higher and higher. That’s justice in woke America today.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.