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Crime, Law and Justice
Matt Sepic
Minneapolis

Aitkin County prosecutors oppose release of man serving life for 1998 murder

20240605_194507_Raven_Scan
Centurion Ministries Attorney Jim Cousins, left, is photographed with Brian Pippitt, right, in this undated photo. The Minnesota Attorney General's Office recommended that Pippitt's murder conviction be overturned in June of 2024.
Courtesy of Great North Innocence Project

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The Aitkin County Attorney’s Office is opposing the release of a man who alleges that he was wrongfully convicted for a 1998 murder.

In June, the Minnesota Attorney General's conviction review unit recommended that Brian Pippitt be exonerated.

Pippitt, now 62, is serving a life sentence after a jury found him guilty of strangling and beating storekeeper Evelyn Malin, 84, in the home attached to her convenience store in McGregor.

Attorneys with the Great North Innocence Project and Centurion, nonprofits that advocate for people who are wrongfully convicted, argue that prosecutors presented unreliable witnesses, including a jailhouse informant, and that the crime scene had been “staged” to make it appear as if the killers had entered Malin’s the building through a basement window in an effort to bolster the state’s theory of the case.

In a Monday filing, Assistant Aitkin County Attorneys Lisa Roggenkamp Rakotz and Sebastian Mesa argue that in 2002, the Minnesota Supreme Court determined that the witness testimony was consistent with the physical evidence presented at trial, and that the conviction review unit is presenting “simply a different theory of the case based on the same evidence.”

Jim Mayer, one of Pippitt’s attorneys, told MPR News on Monday that he’s disappointed in the prosecutors’ move, and fears that it could be “months or years” before Pippitt is freed.