Overview
- Today’s 10 a.m. status conference is Vance Boelter’s first court appearance since lead prosecutor Harry Jacobs resigned to enter private practice.
- Joe Thompson, the acting U.S. attorney who filed the charges, also resigned, leaving the office with just over a dozen prosecutors, CBS News reports.
- Three Minnesota-based Justice Department attorneys remain assigned to the prosecution.
- Boelter has pleaded not guilty, and his defense seeks more time to review more than 130,000 documents, about 1,000 hours of audio and video, and 2,000 photos, with a pre-trial hearing scheduled for May.
- He is charged with killing Melissa Hortman and her husband and wounding Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, and prosecutors say he impersonated a police officer; a conviction on the murder counts could carry life imprisonment or the death penalty.