By Mara H. Gottfried
Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A man convicted in the 1970 murder of St. Paul officer James Sackett will not be paroled from prison at this time, the state’s Supervised Release Board said in a split decision Friday.
Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell, a member of the board, made the motion to keep Ronald Lindsey Reed in prison. He and another board member voted in favor and two voted against. With the split vote, the final decision fell to the commissioner’s vote to not grant parole.
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The matter will go before the board again in 18 months.
Reed, who turned 76 last week, was arrested in 2005. A Ramsey County jury convicted him in 2006 of aiding and abetting first-degree murder and conspiring to commit first-degree murder.
He was sentenced to life in prison under the law of 1970, when a life sentence was a minimum of 17 years incarceration, according to the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
Minnesota law has been changed and now says a person convicted of first-degree murder of a peace officer will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Julie Sackett, who was 14 months old when her father was killed, said Friday that her family is pleased with the board’s decision.
“As pleased as we are with that decision, we now have to face another parole board meeting,” she said. “Parole board meeting number five.”
Reed has said he was not involved in the crime and said during last month’s Supervised Release Board meeting: “I’m not the monster that the media and people have portrayed me to be.” He said he hopes people would judge him by his outreach work before prison and in prison.
Reed became eligible to be considered for parole as of September 2021. He had been considered four times before the SRB’s Aug. 11 meeting, with the last time in 2024.
At the August meeting of the Supervised Released Board, following lengthy discussion, members pushed back a decision to their meeting a month later, which was Friday.
Differing views from board members
Schnell’s motion on Friday was to deny parole and bring the case back to the board in a year and a half.
“The motion is really based on and informed by … victim and public sentiments,” Schnell said during the meeting.
Schnell said during Friday’s meeting that while he was not in a “position to assess or determine the question of innocence, the reality is that … the parole forum is not the remedy for addressing those concerns and therefore is not a factor in that determination.”
Supervised Release Board member Toni Carter said Friday she had “real issues with the motion” and didn’t “want to support straight denial (of parole) with no actions toward moving forward.”
She added, “We are in a position where we absolutely have sentiment for the victim family and for our law enforcement officers whose input has been unfavorable. We are also in a position where we have a responsibility to act upon a set of criteria and to make reasoned judgments and be able to iterate the reason for our judgments considering those criteria toward parole.”
The Supervised Release Board, when considering whether to grant parole to an inmate serving a life or indeterminate sentence, is instructed by state law to consider various factors.
During last month’s meeting, SRB member Chris Bray listed them and how they related to Reed, including:
Community investigation report: “Law enforcement community doesn’t support his release, and I don’t think (Reed) can change that,” Bray said.
Views of the victim’s family: “It’s a terrible loss to the Sackett family, their friends, their community, and it can’t be replaced and it can’t be undone,” Bray said.
Risk to the community: “I don’t think there is any evidence in the report that demonstrates he’s a risk to the community, and that includes his age,” Bray said. “I think he’s met every directive we have asked of him. He’s respected by staff. He has a stable living situation, he has community support.”
Criminal history: Reed was arrested in November 1970 on an unrelated warrant, and police “found weapons and detailed plans for an airplane hijacking and hostage plot designed to win the release of” his girlfriend and two other people from jail, according to a Minnesota Supreme Court summary. Reed was charged and convicted in a 1970 attempted bank robbery in Omaha, Nebraska . Following his release from prison in 1985, an attorney for Reed said he remained law-abiding.
Reed asks if he’ll ever be paroled
Reed, speaking to the board on a livestream video from the Lino Lakes prison, asked the two commissioners who voted “yes” to not paroling him — Schnell and Sheryl Ramstad : “If the case is that you’re never going to parole me, can you articulate to me — I’ll refer to you, Commissioner — can you tell me exactly why you’re taking this hardline position?”
Schnell responded that his “fundamental rational” is “victim and public sentiment.”
Reed asked: “Are you saying that, as long as the family is opposed to it, that you would not consider it?”
Reed has been active in prison, including in the Prison Fellowship Program, from which he graduated and became a clerk.
“I don’t want to take anything away from the things that you have done and accomplished,” Schnell said to Reed. “… We weigh this on the totality of factors and weighing the totality of factors, this is … the position.”
Reed continued, “Specifically, I’m asking, what does the board want me to do in order to go forward?”
“What you are being asked to do is to continue doing what you’re doing, and there will be an opportunity for reconsideration in 18 months,” Schnell said.
Reed said he’s concerned that “it seems to be a political decision. It doesn’t seem to be based upon …,” he started saying, and Schnell stepped in and said: “This is not a debate. This is a decision that has been made.”
27-year-old officer ambushed
Sackett’s widow and children have said they don’t think Reed should ever be released from prison. Before the August meeting, they asked community members to write to the Supervised Release Board, opposing Reed’s release.
Julie Sackett said Friday that, before Reed’s next meeting before the board, she’ll be “digging into the parole board process and criteria that has to be met before someone can be on parole or even the stepped down process, including programming and community involvement. I also think it’s a good time to look at the legislation related to sentencing. Sentencing should be based on current guidelines. Not based on the sentencing at the time of the crime.”
St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry thanked the board for their decision and said he hopes it “brings some semblance of solace to the family of Officer Sackett.”
“To this day, Ronald Lindsey Reed has never accepted responsibility for what he did on May 22, 1970,” he said in a statement. “He committed a heinous crime that devastated Officer Sackett’s family and the entire law enforcement community. … I ask the community to take a moment to remember James and his family today. His sacrifice will not be forgotten.”
On May 22, 1970, James Sackett was on his first day back to work after the birth of his son, who was then 20 days old. He was a father of four, the oldest who was 6.
A call was dispatched about a woman in labor and Sackett responded. It turned out to be a false emergency call on Hague Avenue at Victoria Street in the Summit-University neighborhood. Sackett, 27, was shot in the front of the home.
Reed, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, said during last month’s Supervised Released Board meeting that the morning after Sackett was killed, he learned his girlfriend, Constance Trimble, had placed the fake call to police.
“We learned on the news that the call … led to that police officer’s murder,” he said. “We both were shocked that it occurred … and we were afraid that if we came forward, that we would be held responsible for it.”
He said the responsibility he would accept “is that I should have come forward.”
Trimble was arrested in 1970, and was acquitted at trial.
Larry Larue Clark, who was arrested and charged at the same time as Reed in 2005, was also convicted in the case. The Minnesota Supreme Court overturned Clark’s conviction, saying a judge gave improper instructions to a jury.
Clark entered an Alford plea in 2009 to one count of conspiracy to commit premeditated murder. The plea did not admit guilt but acknowledged the prosecution likely had enough evidence to secure a conviction. He was sentenced to five years in prison and one year on supervised release.
The state Supreme Court upheld Reed’s conviction.
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