Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images News via Getty Images
By Jerome London
The unit has released at least three men convicted of serious crimes, including one who served nearly 25 years in prison. It ran on federal grant money, and when the Justice Department refused to renew it, the project stalled.
At least three men have been released from Minnesota prisons thanks to the Department of Corrections, including one who had served nearly 25 years and another serving a life sentence from a 2009 conviction. Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, said on Wednesday that he is suspending the unit because the Trump administration will not renew the federal grant it paid for.
“It is disappointing that our federal government has decided to stop identifying and correcting wrongful convictions,” Ellison said. He said he established this unit because “no innocent person should serve time for a crime they did not commit.”
The unit started in 2020 and began accepting applications in 2021, run in partnership with the Great North Innocence Project. It was one of the few case review units in the country, and an independent study of 2025 called it “an example of how integrity work should be done in the country,” noting that it was more effective than similar units nationally in cases reviewed and completed.
It used a $300,000 grant for its first two years, with $500,000 for the next two years, until the Justice Department rejected the next request. Ellison’s office is also cutting 17 employees, tied in part to similar budget pressures.
The denial of the grant follows the Trump administration’s broader pattern of freezing federal funding to Democratic-controlled states and agencies, and Ellison has previously sued for other Trump-era funding.
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