Minn. Sentencing Guidelines Commission hears broad overhaul proposals; public commenters split over severity increases

Saint Paul — The Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission convened a public hearing Nov. 20 to take testimony on a package of proposed revisions to the 2025 sentencing guidelines, including changes to criminal-history scoring, revisions to offense-severity rankings and several procedural clarifications.

Chair Kelly Lynn Mitchell opened the hearing by describing the commission’s comprehensive review and the specific proposals preliminarily adopted by unanimous votes on Oct. 9, 2025. The proposals would change the four components of the criminal-history score (prior felonies, custody status at the time of the offense, prior misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, and prior juvenile adjudications), amend Guidelines section 5a (the offense severity reference table) and section 5b (severity levels by statutory citation), clarify the guidelines’ purpose and principles, clarify the burden of proving out-of-state offenses, display ranges in shaded grid cells and add a “true first offender” mitigating factor to the list judges may cite when departing from presumptive sentences.

The commission has posted the full proposed modifications on its website and will leave the record open for written comment for five calendar days after the hearing; written submissions must arrive by Nov. 25, 2025. The commission will meet Dec. 18, 2025, at 1 p.m. to consider final adoption or rejection of the package.

Testimony: prosecutors, defense advocates and advocates for the wrongfully convicted

Morgan Koontz, criminal director for the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, told the commission she supports most of the recommendations. Koontz said reducing the criminal-history decay period from 15 years to 10 "will help focus the sentencing on the current offense and away from past conduct for which the person has already been sentenced." She also supported eliminating juvenile points for "straight juvenile" adjudications, saying juvenile law emphasizes rehabilitation and that the most serious juvenile cases that already result in extended juvenile jurisdiction or adult sentences would still add criminal-history points. Koontz opposed converting the custody-status point to a durational increase, calling the proposed conversion inappropriate because it would broaden the possible sentencing range; she also supported allowing offender-related factors to be considered for durational departures and permitting mitigated departures for persons with no prior convictions.

Anna Hall, a community defense attorney at the Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis, said the center "strongly supports all of the proposed changes to the sentencing guidelines, except the increases in offense severity rankings." Hall said the changes that shorten decay periods and eliminate juvenile adjudication points recognize "that no person can be defined by one act" and urged the commission to explain what evidence supports raising severity levels for particular offenses. She specifically called out proposed increases to fourth-degree assault, describing how many such cases arise in situations involving de-escalation failures or mental-health crises and asking, "what evidence supports increasing offense severity rankings for these offenses?"

Marvina Haynes, founder of Minnesota Wrongfully Convicted Judicial Reform, framed the guidelines as more than numbers, saying they determine whether a child returns home or "loses their future." Haynes said she supports removing juvenile points and shortening decay periods (she suggested seven years for misdemeanor decay), called for independent transparency and continued community partnerships, and warned the state’s sentencing tools have been misapplied and contributed to racial disparities.

A community commenter using the name Raj urged the commission to integrate restorative and transformative-justice research and community-led diversion practices into guidelines work, citing local projects (he referenced Ramsey County and the work of John Choi) as examples of community-based alternatives to purely punitive responses.

What remains contested

Witnesses and advocates at the hearing broadly supported reducing the long 15-year decay period and removing points for straight juvenile adjudications, but the proposed increases to certain offense severity levels drew significant criticism from defense and community advocates. Anna Hall and others said the commission should publish the empirical basis for severity increases and reconsider how fourth-degree assault cases are categorized given typical case contexts (mental-health crises and officer de-escalation failures were cited in examples).

Procedures and next steps

The commission will accept written comments submitted by Nov. 25, 2025, and is scheduled to vote to adopt or reject the proposals on Dec. 18, 2025. No formal motions or votes were taken during the Nov. 20 public hearing itself.

Reporting note: quotes and attributions in this story come from testimony recorded at the Nov. 20, 2025, public hearing of the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission.