A Minnesota state senator was convicted of burglary Friday for breaking into her estranged stepmother’s home, allegedly in search of her father’s ashes and other mementos.
The jury found Nicole Mitchell, 51, guilty of first-degree burglary and possession of burglary tools.
Mitchell displayed little emotion as the verdicts were read.
Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy was quick to issue a statement saying that Mitchell has told her colleagues that she planned to resign if convicted, “and I expect her to follow through on that pledge.”
The Democrat from the St. Paul suburb of Woodbury has maintained her innocence and refused to resign since her arrest in the early hours of April 22, 2024, at her stepmother’s home in the northwestern Minnesota city of Detroit Lakes.
Mitchell insisted in her testimony that she went there purely to check on her stepmother, who has Alzheimer’s disease. And she said she initially lied when she told police repeatedly the night of her arrest that she went there in search of her late father’s ashes and other items of sentimental value. She testified that she didn’t want to further upset her stepmother by expressing concern about her well-being.
Mitchell’s father died in 2023 at the age of 72. He had been married to Mitchell’s stepmother, Carol Mitchell, for nearly 40 years.
The jury saw bodycam video of Mitchell telling police repeatedly after her arrest that she broke into the home because her stepmother refused to give her items of sentimental value from her father, including some of his ashes, photos and a flannel shirt.
The first-term senator was dressed in all-black, including a black hat, and had a flashlight covered with a black sock when she was arrested. The video showed her telling police, “Clearly, I’m not good at this,” and “I know I did something bad.”
But Mitchell testified Thursday that despite what she told police, she didn’t really intend to take anything. She said she had become increasingly concerned about her stepmother’s worsening memory problems and paranoia, and wanted to check on her well-being. She testified her stepmother was afraid of being put in a nursing home. Mitchell said she thought her stepmom would be less upset to hear she wanted some of her father’s items than to have her competency questioned.
The former broadcast meteorologist and now-retired Air National Guard officer was charged with one count of first-degree burglary of an occupied dwelling, a felony that carries a mandatory minimum of six months in jail but requires proof of intent to commit a crime inside, and one count of possession of burglary tools, a lesser felony without a mandatory minimum.
In the prosecution’s closing argument Friday, Becker County Attorney Brian McDonald urged jurors to focus on “the many lies of Nicole Mitchell” and evaluate her testimony with reason and common sense. And he urged them to review the body camera video showing what she told police after her arrest.
“I submit to you she was telling the truth on April 22nd, 2024. And if you believe that she was telling the truth to the officers, then you know she had the intent to steal. She told you. She told the officers.”
Mitchell testified that she had long had a good relationship with Carol Mitchell, but that their final break came in a series of increasingly acrimonious text messages about a month before the break-in.
In the texts, which were shown to the jury, her stepmother refused to reschedule the interment of her father’s ashes from a Tuesday, during a busy stretch of the legislative session, to another date. Her stepmother did, however, send her a fishing bobber at some point containing a small amount of his ashes as a memento, she acknowledged.
Defense attorney Bruce Ringstrom Jr. told the jury in his closing argument that Mitchell did not steal anything and did not intend to. He conceded that she used poor judgment. He said everybody has told “white lies,” and that Mitchell’s goal was to avoid aggravating her stepmother’s distrust even further.
“We all know the difference between a white lie and a meaningful, damaging one,” Ringstrom said. “The problem is that this happened in the context of something that was a terrible mess, a mess that Nicole made. But it was a mess.”
Under such difficult circumstances, Ringstrom argued, “Nicole’s white lies make perfect sense.”
Carol Mitchell struggled with her memory when she took the stand for the prosecution, and was unable to recall names and key details about the night of the break-in. But she said she felt violated.
Mitchell’s rejection of calls for her resignation after her arrest frayed relations between Democrats and Republicans in the narrowly divided state Senate.
Democrats hold only a one-seat majority in the Senate, so they needed her vote. They said she deserved to have the legal process play out and declined to expel her or ask her to step down. But they excluded her from caucus meetings and took her off her committees.
Republicans periodically tried to kick her out of the chamber but lacked the votes. They filed an ethics case against her, but the state Senate’s ethics panel is tied 2-2 between Democrats and Republicans, so those proceedings were largely put on hold, pending developments in her criminal case.
