Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced Monday that federal prosecutors had turned over evidence her office had sought for six months in the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, killed during protests against the Minneapolis immigration crackdown known as "Operation Metro Surge" [1]. The handover, from the office of U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Daniel Rosen, included previously withheld hard drives containing statements and police body-camera video, plus Good's badly damaged SUV. "The wonderful thing now is we have all the evidence," Moriarty said [1].

That claim marks a real advance on the position this paper described a day earlier, when Houston relatives at a vigil demanded an independent review of an ICE killing and the paper held that no force conclusion should precede evidence custody and a credible process. Minnesota now has custody. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which received the material, said "great strides have been made" toward a "thorough and complete review."

Custody is not a case. No one has been charged in either death, and the federal government has argued that state prosecutors lack jurisdiction to investigate federal officers. Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot in her vehicle leaving a protest on Jan. 24; Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was killed during the same wave of protests against the crackdown, which drew national outrage. Operation Metro Surge, billed as the largest immigration enforcement operation ever mounted, ended in February.

Here the X frame and the AP account diverge on what "we now have all the evidence" buys. The Hennepin County Attorney's verified posts present two-way evidence sharing as a breakthrough that lets the investigation proceed, and Moriarty posted that "we now have the federal evidence in these cases, which we have been trying to get for six months." AP reports the harder edge [1]: a lawyer for Pretti's family, Steve Schleicher, said Rosen's office declined at a Monday meeting to confirm any cooperation agreement between state and federal agencies. "No family should be required to beg federal authorities to do their job," he said, warning that "without a public commitment by federal authorities to cooperate with the state, it is difficult -- if not impossible -- to pursue justice." Possessing the files does not secure the jurisdiction or the federal cooperation needed to charge anyone.

The handover may also be transactional rather than conciliatory. Documents in a suit by state and local officials suggest the release came after federal prosecutors sought Minnesota's own evidence in the case of ICE agent Christian Castro, 52, charged with assault and falsely reporting a crime in the Jan. 14 nonfatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis. "We are willing to share evidence with you if the exchange is reciprocal," Bureau Superintendent Drew Evans wrote to federal officials. What Moriarty won all week may be a swap, not a surrender.

-- SAMUEL CRANE, Washington