http://minnesotaindependent.com/15872/judicial-candidate-hedlund%e2%80%99s-muslim-related-email-gaffe-is-not-the-first-time-she-has-generated-public-controversyPlease read this article about her extremism. She's a lot worse than her Pawlenty appointed opponent, Gildea.
Beginning late in 1992, Hedlund presided over the murder trial of A.C. Ford, the first of a group of gang members eventually convicted of killing Minneapolis police officer Jerry Haaf.
She ruled that Ford’s jury should be anonymous, the first time that had been done in the entire history of Minnesota jurisprudence. According to Diane Wiley, a founder of the National Jury Project, the ruling sent a clear message to the jury: “It says, ‘
are extremely dangerous. So dangerous that we can’t protect you from them.’” Adding to the fear, Hedlund, the presiding judge, told KARE-11 early in the trial, “Minnesota has lost its innocence.”
One of the key witnesses against Ford was a woman named Wyvonia Williams. After Ford’s conviction, when called to the witness stand in the trials of other gang members accused of killing Haaf, Williams testified under oath that Hedlund had approached her before the Ford trial. “She said to get A.C. Ford, that ‘Once we got him, then the rest of them will be easy to get,’” Williams swore on the Bible. Hedlund denies making the statement. Ford lost his appeal for a new trial. At his sentencing, Ford complained that he was convicted by an all-white jury. “I’m sadder still that you think all this has to do with racism,” Hedlund replied. “I suggest it is time for you to become a member of the human race.” Later, the judge told the Star Tribune that Ford was no more entitled to have minorities on the jury that she would be entitled to a jury of white female judges.
A year later, in June 1994, Hedlund struck down a Minneapolis City Council ordinance that provided health care benefits for domestic partners of unmarried city employees who registered their relationship with the City. Lawyers for the City and its employees argued it as a clear-cut issue of municipal jurisdiction—they believed they had a right to expand upon state law, and that sexual practices and other lifestyle issues were hot-button sideshows.
In a voluminous, 33-page decision, Hedlund strongly disagreed. “Redefining family relationships is not a proper subject for municipal regulation,” she wrote. “Marriage enjoys a protected and preferred status in society,” and because the city ordinance did not acknowledge the primacy of that marriage relationship, it was “repugnant” to state law. Legal parallels between homosexuality and impermissibly “licentious” behavior were invoked and the state’s criminal penalties for sodomy were cited. After the decision, the lawyer who argued against the ordinance, serving free of charge on loan from the Virginia-based, pro-Christian, Home School Legal Defense Association, crowed that Hedlund “reads the laws the same way I do. Right down the line, she agreed with what I said.”
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