Shocking New Evidence in the Homicide of Renee Good! 

So friends, there’s new reporting out that reveals for the first time the nature of the injuries suffered by Renee Nicole Good when she was shot and killed by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. The reporting is disturbing. Yes. But what it proves is that there is an indispensable need, a non-negotiable need for a full, fair, and thorough investigation of an officer involved shooting resulting in death.

Because justice matters. >> [music] >> Hey all, Glen Kersner here. So friends, after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed American citizen Renee Good, but before an investigation had even commenced, never mind concluded, Donald Trump, JD Vance, and Christine Gnome all sprinted to the cameras to preclar Ross to announce that this was a justified killing.

Well, now that reporting is revealing for the first time a number of things about the incident that day, including the nature of the injuries suffered by Renee Good at the hands of Jonathan Ross. One thing is crystal clear. There has to be a full, fair, thorough, and professional investigation of this officer involved shooting resulting in death.

Here are some of the new revelations by the New York Times. Headline: Emergency call transcripts record a crisis unfolding in real time. The killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent was instantly reported to the Minneapolis police. The calls reflect shock, fury, and confusion. And that article begins, “Renee Good was shot last week amid a thicket of cell phones that recorded her killing and afforded instant communication for witnesses.

 Records of police and emergency operators released late Thursday contain fragmentaryary, confused, and profane reports from the scene in South Minneapolis and the efforts of the city police to contend with a crisis not of their making. The documents, about 60 pages of 911 call transcripts and police and fire department incident reports, sketch the visceral shock of bystanders reduced to dry transcripts and tur entries in the shortand of the police scanner.

 The calls to 911 began at 9:38 a.m. on January 7, shortly after an Immigration and Customs and Enforcement officer fired a gun into Ms. Goods Maroon Honda Pilot as observers and protesters confronted federal agents. The frantic calls persisted for about an hour. Quote, “There’s 15 ICE agents and they shot her like because she wouldn’t open her door.

” One caller said, “I witnessed it.” A separate caller told an operator asked if anyone was hit. She replied after catching her breath, yes, bleeding. The caller later said she tried to drive away but crashed into the nearest vehicle that was parked. The caller said she saw blood all over the driver. The dispatcher responded that lots of help was on the way.

 Another caller pleaded, “Send an ambulance, please. Ambulance, please.” When paramedics arrived at 9:42 a.m., Miss Good was in the driver’s seat, unresponsive, with blood on her face and torso, the records say. After they removed her from the vehicle, she was not breathing and had an irregular pulse.

 And now, friends, the nature of Renee Good’s injuries as documented by fire department members. She had two apparent gunshot wounds on the right side of her chest, another on the left forearm, and a possible fourth on the left side of her head. Blood was flowing from her left ear and her pupils were dilated. The fire department’s report said in an ambulance in route to the hospital, medics performed CPR on Miss Good. About 10:30 a.m.

, resuscitation efforts were stopped. Jonathan Ross, who was identified as the ICE agent who shot Miss Good, was still on the scene, according to a report from the Minneapolis Police Department. About 15 minutes later, he was taken to a federal building. Okay, friends, there is a lot to unpack there, but for today, I want to focus on just one aspect of this new reporting.

 Renee Good’s injuries and what they might tell us about the nature of this fatal shooting. So, you may have heard me say before that I’m a homicide guy. Yes, I was a prosecutor for 30 years, but for 22 of those 30 years, I handled murder cases, investigated them in the grand jury, indicted them, tried them, and beyond that.

 Um, I was chief of homicide for a number of years and deputy chief before that, responsible for overseeing all of the murder investigations in the grand jury and prosecutions in the courts of Washington DC. So, I have been involved in more murder investigations and prosecutions than I could ever count. And an important part of every single homicide case, whether murder, manslaughter, is the autopsy performed on the victim.

The autopsy report that is generated by the medical examiner, the forensic pathologist who performs the autopsy, and then ultimately the testimony at trial because we need to prove things like cause of death and manner of death. But that’s just for openers. Those are the most basic elements of a medical examiner’s a forensic pathologist’s testimony, the cause and manner of death.

 There is so much more to amedical examiner’s testimony because the nature of the injuries suffered by the victim, the deedent can tell the jury so much about the nature of the homicide. For example, whether what witnesses tell the jurors they saw is supported by or contradicted by the nature of the injuries. For example, the wound path or wound track through the body, the angle of it, is it right to left? Is it front to back? Is it an upward trajectory, a downward trajectory through the body that can support or corroborate what an eyewitness says he or she saw happen at the time of the fatal encounter or it

can contradict it. So, there’s a lot um to be gained or lost by the testimony of a medical examiner, a forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy. But now I feel like I’m talking to my jury. Um, mind you, this is off-the-cuff stream of consciousness. If I were talking to my jury, you know, it would have been a fully drafted argument, whether an opening statement or a closing argument.

 It would have been vetted to make sure it was [snorts] consistent with all of the evidence in the testimony. It would have been practiced. You know, I was pretty careful about that that kind of stuff. This is off the cuff, so bear with me. So let’s start with the most basic aspects of a medical examiner’s testimony and that is the cause and manner of death.

 The cause of death is as the name suggests what caused the death. Was it a gunshot wound? Was it sharp force trauma which is what we call a stabbing? Was it esphyxiation by manual strangulation? That is choking someone to death. That’s the cause of death. The manner of death. There are only five recognized manners of death when medical examiners rule.

 And medical examiners are allowed to offer their opinion. Expert witnesses generally are allowed to offer their opinion about for example the manner of death. Whereas lay witnesses, eyewitnesses are not permitted to offer opinions, just what they know, what they saw. But the five rulings are homicide, suicide, natural death, think disease, you know, process, uh, cancer, heart attack, accidental death, you know, I’m up on my roof cleaning out my gutter and I tumble off the roof, break my neck and die.

 And undetermined death. We’ll talk more about that in a second. homicide, suicide, natural death, accidental death, or undetermined death. Now, the reason the opinion of a medical examiner is so important is because, you know, the cause of death could be gunshot wound, right? Let’s say I I don’t mean to be indelicate or or trigger anyone with um uh graphic language, but if someone is shot in the head, that could be a homicide, that could be a suicide.

So, the injuries to the body don’t tell the medical examiner the whole story. Medical examiners take in all information from all sources, witnesses and police officers and and reports, uh, 911 calls and on and on and on to reach a conclusion to a reasonable degree of medical or scientific certainty. That’s the magic language that supports a medical examiner’s opinion and conclusion.

 But it is those external facts and circumstances that will inform a medical examiner as to whether a gunshot wound to the head is a homicide or a suicide. Right? So, um, and an undetermined death, let me touch on that. Often a medical examiner’s ruling has to await collecting up of a lot of external evidence and information. For example, if it’s a poisoning case, there may not be any external injuries or indications of the cause of death until the medical examiner takes tissue samples and samples of bodily fluid, samples of organs, and sends it out for

toxicological testing to see what might be in the victim or the deedence system. And so they can rule a death undetermined until they get all of the evidence and information that will impact their ultimate decision on how to rule a particular death. Some homicides when somebody dies, homicide does not conote criminality.

 By the way, the word homicide is simply death at the hands of another. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a criminal um killing of another person. If you kill somebody in pure self-defense, it’s a homicide, death at the hands of another, but it’s not criminal. Um, but some homicides remain undetermined, you know, in perpetuity because the medical examiner never gets enough external information to unravel exactly what caused the death.

 Okay, so to recap, homicide, suicide, natural death, accidental death, and undetermined death. Those are the five rulings. So, what did we learn from this reporting by the New York Times? No, this is not the results from the autopsy. This is a report from presumably EMS personnel, right? uh fire department personnel um who observed the nature of the injuries when they came upon Renee Good and documented them.

 So what we learned in the reporting was that Renee Good suffered two gunshot wounds, apparent gunshot wounds to the right side of her chest. And it’s already probably jumping out at you as to, you know, how that is a realcuriosity. If she’s sitting in the driver’s seat, right? Driver side door over here, passenger compartment over here, and she’s struck twice in the right side of the chest.

 Put a pin in that. So, you have two gunshot wounds to the right side of the chest, one to the left forearm. That seems to make some intuitive sense, right? If her, we even saw in the video moments before she was shot, she had that left arm kind of half out the window and she was waving another car by saying in in essence, you go before me.

 Not trying to run over or ram police cars or officers. You go ahead before me. So, she had one gunshot wound to her left forearm and then one gunshot wound to the left side of her head, which again makes some sense given that we saw multiple rounds being fired by Jonathan Ross into when there was no risk to him whatsoever cuz he’s now standing sort of right outside the driver’s door shooting into the passenger compartment.

 that you would expect would produce potentially a gunshot wound to the left forearm and to the left side of her head. But what about the two to the right side of her chest, right? We can we can easily envision how she suffered the one to the left side of her head and the one to the left forearm, but there were two to the right side of her chest.

 Now, does that mean that two other shots came in from another gunman from the passenger side of the car and struck her in the right side of the chest? Well, there’s no video evidence suggesting that. There’s been no indication that there was a second ICE officer unloading on Renee Good. Um, but let me try to talk through based on my experience in dealing with murder cases and autopsy reports and medical examiners, some of what might account for these findings.

First of all, just because there are four gunshot wounds to a victim, a deedent, that doesn’t mean four rounds were fired. Why do I say that? Often a gunshot wound suffered to an arm, a forearm, can be what we call a through and through. So you have an entrance wound, an exit wound, and then if Renee Good was trying to protect herself, I can’t tell you how many times we would have um murder cases where one shot was fired, but we would have two gunshot wounds.

 Why? Because victims would throw up their hands and they would have one gunshot wound to their hand, maybe their forearm. It would travel through their body, exit, and then enter their head. So, you have two gunshot wounds, right? If you’re holding your forearm up to try to protect your head in vain, um you may have two gunshot wounds to a body, but only one round fired.

 So that might account because I think what what we are learning from all of the different video angles and the reporting is it looks like there may have been three shots fired. One when Ross was sort of at that front corner of the driver’s side, front corner of the vehicle and then two, it appeared when he was no longer in harm’s way at all.

Of course, he had put himself in harm’s way. Contrary to police policy and procedure, you don’t step in front of a uh a running vehicle, never mind a moving vehicle. A vehicle if a vehicle’s engine is on, you don’t step in front of it. But then he fired two when there was no danger to him directly into it appears the passenger compartment of Renee Goods Honda.

 So, how might she have gotten two gunshot wounds to the right side of her chest? Well, here’s what I will say, friends. I have seen unfortunately too many videos of people being shot and killed in my years as a homicide prosecutor. There is a saturation of cameras in Washington DC where I prosecuted. Whether they were city crime cameras, they were um you know commercial establishment surveillance cameras, Ring doorbell cameras, lots and lots and lots of crimes are caught on video.

 And I have reviewed more than I can ever remember, more than I choose to remember, um, videos of people being shot and killed. And the one thing I’ve come to learn is that the trajectory of a path wound through the body, for example, or where someone was struck on their body, if it’s a shooting death, tells us something, but it doesn’t tell us everything, and it may actually contradict what you see happening on video.

Um because bullets have what we call a dynamic effect on the human body and they will cause victims to twist and turn and contort instantly in all sorts of unpredictable ways that will result in injuries, entrance wounds to parts of the body that would otherwise seem inexplicable. like somebody sitting in the driver’s seat with a shooter outside the driver’s door shooting into the passenger compartment, but they have entry wounds on the left side, excuse me, the right side of their chest. That doesn’t make intuitive sense

until you realize after the first shot or as the shots are coming in, we don’t know if Renee Good ended up bending down this way with her head toward the driver’s door and shots coming in and hitting her in what would be the rightside of her chest if she was sitting upright.

 They analyze everything in what they call the anatomical position from uh somebody who is standing upright, arms down at the side, legs straight. That’s what you see in autopsy um report diagrams all the time. So, it tells us something, but it doesn’t tell us everything. You know why it doesn’t tell us everything, friends? Because we need a full, fair, professional, independent investigation of the officer involved fatal shooting of Renee Good.

 It should be conducted by the federal government. It was a federal officer who exercised force resulting in death. And it sure looks to this old career prosecutor like excessive force resulting in death. So, it should absolutely be investigated by the federal government. Not that I trust this FBI or this DOJ to conduct a full, fair, thorough, and professional investigation of a killing by a federal officer.

But let me just read a quick paragraph to you, and I’m going to leave you with this. This is from a piece that I am in the process of authoring together with my friend Dave Aaronburgg. He was a longtime state court prosecutor. I was a career federal prosecutor. We’re authoring a piece jointly about what we think uh an investigation and potential prosecution of Jonathan Ross should look like, could look like, what options are available particularly to the state of Minnesota if the feds one continue to refuse to investigate as a complete

abdication of their responsibilities. Um, and if the feds continue to wrongfully withhold evidence from the state, evidence that is needed for the state law enforcement authorities to conduct a full, fair, thorough investigation. Here’s a short excerpt from the piece we’re working on, and I will bring it to you fully when it’s published in the coming days.

 um regarding the need for a federal investigation that the feds have indicated they will not conduct. The need for an investigation into the fatal shooting of Miss Good is self-evident. Indeed, as the former head of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Kristen Clark, has said, “The officer involved shooting death of Renee Good quote is precisely the kind of case that the Civil Rights Division would investigate carefully, fully, and fairly because this is one of the most solemn duties and responsibilities of the

Justice Department, investigating officials who potentially violate the law and violate our constitution while acting under color of law. But friends, it looks like the federal government is abdicating that responsibility to have the civil rights division of the Department of Justice conduct an investigation.

 But now that we know a little bit about the nature of the injuries suffered by Renee Good, [sighs] there is all the more reason for the state to step up. And it looks like the state of Minnesota is stepping up to conduct a full, fair, professional, thorough investigation because justice matters. Friends, as always, please stay safe, please stay tuned, and I look forward to talking with you all again tomorrow.