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A former Minnesota state senator was sentenced to six months in jail on Tuesday after being caught on police body camera footage inside her stepmother’s house dressed as a cat burglar.
Prosecutors indicated that Nicole Mitchell’s motive for the break-in was to steal her father’s ashes from her stepmother following a significant dispute between them.
Mitchell, a Democrat who continued to serve in office for over a year after the incident, will complete six months on work release, attending her job during the day and returning to jail at night.
According to Minnesota law, defendants need only serve two-thirds of their sentence, so she’ll be on work release for four months.
‘I don’t think six months is very much time for what she put me through,’ her stepmother, Carol Mitchell, told the Minnesota Star Tribune.
‘But at least I know it’s going to hurt her… losing her children and losing her job. … I guess there’s definitely repercussions for what she did.’
Mitchell, 50, will complete her sentence outside of Becker County, where the April 2024 incident took place, a decision Becker County Attorney Brian McDonald criticized as ‘preferential treatment’.
The defense argued for even lighter treatment, hoping Judge Michael Fritz would downgrade her two felony burglary convictions down to misdemeanors.
Former Minnesota State Senator Nicole Mitchell is seen during her trial in July. She was convicted of two burglary charges for breaking into the home of her stepmother, Carol Mitchell
Mitchell is seen on police body camera footage hiding in the basement of her stepmother’s house, dressed in all black
Attorney Dane DeKrey said in a 31-page sentencing memo that Mitchell had ‘already been publicly tarred and feathered’ and that her ‘being a felon for life is overkill’.
McDonald, the lead prosecutor, said the defense was essentially arguing that Mitchell is ‘too important to face the consequences.’
He also pointed out that for more than a year, Mitchell was allowed to remain a lawmaker, craft legislation and collect a taxpayer-funded paycheck.
Judge Fritz opted to incarcerate her in Ramsey County, where she lives, after her attorneys told the court she recently got a job at a fast food restaurant. This was the only place that would hire her with her felon status, they said.
The sentencing was the end of the line for Mitchell, who stubbornly refused to resign from office after she was charged. She even resisted calls to step down from top state Democrats, including Governor Tim Walz.
The public first got a glimpse of Mitchell skulking around her stepmother’s Detroit Lakes home in an all-black outfit during the July trial.
Police were called to home at around 4:45am on April 22, 2024, after a report of a home break in, according to a police affidavit.
Two officers, seen on the body cam footage, confronted Mitchell in the basement of the home and ordered her to get on the ground so she could be put in handcuffs.
The stepmother could be seen in the background watching Mitchell being arrested. The officers identified the point of entry as a basement window.
At the scene, Mitchell reportedly said ‘clearly, I’m not good at this’ and ‘I know I did something bad’.
Later, when Mitchell went on trial, she no longer claimed she was at her stepmother’s home to steal her late father’s ashes. Instead, she said she was there to check on her because of her Alzheimer’s
Jonathan Kuehl, the biological son of Carol Mitchell (pictured in her home), testified that the burglary ‘terrified’ her
While Mitchell was being detained, she told her stepmother, ‘I was just trying to get a couple of my dad’s things because you wouldn’t talk to me anymore,’ according to police.
Mitchell later explained to officers that her father had died the year before and that she was trying to steal back his ashes because her stepmother allegedly refused to give them to her.
Text messages read out in court showed that prior to the burglary, Mitchell and her stepmother had a tense disagreement over how and when her father’s remains would be interred.
In court, Mitchell changed her story, insisting that didn’t break into the home to steal anything, rather she was only there to check on her stepmother, who has Alzheimer’s disease.
Some of the most damning testimony came from Jonathan Kuehl, the biological son of Carol Mitchell. He said that the home invasion ‘terrified’ her.
He also said his mother was high-functioning despite her worsening condition, undercutting the defense’s narrative.
‘She’s very functional, and the Alzheimer’s is there. It’s slowly progressing, but if there are’ traumatic events, it would set back her short term memory, Kuehl explained.
McDonald, the prosecutor, said Mitchell’s focus on her stepmother’s Alzheimer’s was a ‘desperate attempt to somehow justify [her] actions and shift blame to the victim for the defendant breaking into victim’s home’.
Mitchell apologized to the court and called what she did ‘ridiculous and illegal and selfish’.
‘I tell my kids that by the time you have to say you’re sorry it’s kind of already too late … because sometimes there are things that are so big you can’t take them back,’ she said. ‘And this is one of those situations.’
She was not remanded after sentencing and is expected to report to work release on October 1. Following her sentence, she will be on probation for the next five years.
