Minnesota Just Shut Down the Unit That Reviews Wrongful Convictions After the Trump Administration Cut Its Funding
by Jerome London · Thought CatalogUpdated 35 minutes ago, July 2, 2026
The unit freed at least three men convicted of serious crimes, including one who spent nearly 25 years in prison. It ran on federal grant money, and when the Justice Department refused to renew it, the work stopped.
At least three men walked out of Minnesota prisons because of the Conviction Review Unit, including one who had served nearly 25 years and another serving a life sentence from a 2009 conviction. Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general, said Wednesday he’s suspending the unit because the Trump administration wouldn’t renew the federal grant that paid for it.
“It is disappointing that our federal government has decided to deprioritize identifying and correcting wrongful convictions,” Ellison said. He launched the unit, he’s said, because “no innocent person should serve time for a crime they did not commit.”
The unit started in 2020 and began taking applications in 2021, run in partnership with the Great North Innocence Project. It was one of only a handful of statewide conviction review units in the country, and a 2025 independent audit called it “a model for how statewide conviction integrity work should be done,” noting it outperformed similar units nationally on cases reviewed and completed.
It ran on a $300,000 federal grant for its first two years, renewed at $500,000 for two more, until the Justice Department denied the next request. Ellison’s office is also cutting 17 employees, tied in part to the same budget pressures.
The grant denial fits a broader pattern of the Trump administration freezing federal money for Democratic-run states and institutions, and Ellison has sued over other Trump-era funding freezes before.
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