So former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor, convicted on two counts last month in the killing of Justine Damond, was sentenced to 12 1/2 years in prison today. But this struck me as odd:
[The judge] sentenced Noor for the murder conviction, leaving the lower count unaddressed.
Previous stories had noted that Noor faced 11-15 years on the murder conviction and 4 years on the manslaughter. Why would the judge leave the manslaughter conviction unaddressed? Don't judges, if they don't want to pile on additional time, typically sentence a defendant for the conviction but make it concurrent with the other sentence(s)? It seems odd that it would simply be "unaddressed."
I mention this because a number of prominent Twin Cities lawyers have been quoted over the last month saying that Noor has a good chance of getting the murder conviction overturned on appeal. And now the judge has sentenced him only on that charge. The judge has not seemed sympathetic to Noor through this whole process, but today's actions make me go...hmmmmm.
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