Overview
- Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced on Wednesday that his office is suspending the statewide Conviction Review Unit after the U.S. Department of Justice refused to renew the federal grant that funded it.
- Ellison said his office cannot absorb the unit’s costs without harming core functions and that recent budget limits and staff reductions left no viable alternative.
- The unit was created in 2020, began accepting applications in 2021 with an initial $300,000 DOJ grant, later received a $500,000 renewal, and over nearly five years logged more than 1,000 applications and helped overturn three wrongful convictions.
- The DOJ award was routed through The Great North Innocence Project to the state unit, and Ellison said he would resume work if funding or other support becomes available.
- Local capacity remains in places such as Hennepin County, but advocates and civil rights groups warn the suspension narrows an independent path for reviewing convictions and may leave some claims unexamined.