Northern Star: John Choi is leading efforts to redefine justice in Minnesota
John Choi was part of a successful campaign to restore voting rights to felons. (AP Photo/Steve Karnowski)
When John Choi became the city attorney for St. Paul, Minnesota, he didn’t have much experience with criminal law.
He graduated in 1995 from what is now Mitchell Hamline School of Law, and then he spent about a decade in private practice focusing on commercial litigation, government relations and municipal law. Upon becoming city attorney in 2006, he began looking into his office’s prosecution of misdemeanors. He asked a lot of questions and for a lot of data.
“What I found was that a lot of times, the things that happened in these cases didn’t really produce an outcome that I think would have made the public proud,” Choi says.
For instance, Choi discovered about a third of the office’s cases involved people who were driving without a valid driver’s license or insurance. Many of them had their licenses suspended because they couldn’t pay fines and fees related to traffic violations. There also were repeat offenders who needed to drive to work or to pick up their kids.
Viewing this as an economic issue, Choi helped create a pilot program in 2009 that allowed drivers in St. Paul and other cities to get their licenses back if they agreed to take a financial management class and go on a payment plan. Minnesota eventually joined states that do not suspend driver’s licenses for failure to pay fines and fees.
Because of that experience, Choi started thinking about how to change other outcomes in the criminal justice system, and when the opportunity arose to run for Ramsey County attorney, he took it. He was elected in 2010 and since has become a leader in progressive justice reform.
“I want people to understand that the criminal legal system is actually owned by the people,” says Choi, who has been reelected three times. “I think for the longest time, we haven’t been critical about how we do things and why we do things.”
Taking initiative
Choi was born in Seoul, South Korea, and immigrated to the United States with his family when he was 3. He believes he was the first Korean American chief prosecutor in the country.
Choi, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Marquette University, often cites this famous quote: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It has guided his work, including his efforts to protect vulnerable children who are sexually exploited and trafficked.
He realized these children often were prosecuted for prostitution. He convened several county attorneys and law enforcement officials in the Twin Cities area, and in February 2011, they announced they would no longer pursue those prosecutions. They would treat the children as victims and concentrate on identifying commercial sex purchasers and traffickers.
“What we said was the priorities are all screwed up here,” Choi says. “We need to stop arresting and prosecuting young people who are actually victims of this crime, and instead, we need to focus on the perpetrators.”
That same year, Minnesota passed its Safe Harbor Law, which said youths under 18 who engaged in prostitution could not be charged with a crime, and it expanded housing and services for these victims. After the law’s passage, Choi led training and created resources for attorneys and law enforcement.
In September 2021, Choi announced another new initiative related to non-public-safety traffic stops.
He says law enforcement often used a stop for something like a broken taillight as a reason to investigate a driver. Black drivers in Ramsey County were four times more likely to be pulled over and nine times more likely to be searched than white drivers for minor violations.
Choi had a lot of conversations with police chiefs in St. Paul and nearby cities, leading to new policies directing their officers to reduce these stops. He also said his office would no longer prosecute cases based solely on non-public-safety stops or related vehicle searches.
“This is one of the areas that I’m most proud of and where we’ve shown that just by working in collaboration with other stakeholders, we could really make a positive change around advancing racial equity,” Choi says.
According to his office, non-public-safety stops and searches in Ramsey County decreased by 86% and 92%, respectively, by June 2023. Black drivers experienced the largest decrease in stops, down 66% the year after the policy change. And there was no discernible impact on public safety.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who has known Choi a long time, describes him as an “effective reformer.”
“It’s not about him, and he’s not trying to take a victory lap,” Ellison says. “He is trying to improve a policy, and he understands if you are going to improve a policy that involves everybody, you probably should talk to everybody and listen to everybody.”
Choi also realized the traditional justice system wasn’t working for youths, and especially youths of color. In July 2021, he and other Ramsey County leaders launched (Re)imagining Justice for Youth, an effort to shift to more restorative, developmentally appropriate responses to young people who engaged in harmful behavior.
Under this initiative, a collaborative review team with representatives from Choi’s office, the public defender’s office and the community evaluate juvenile cases and determine how best to respond. This could include referring the youths back to caregivers or to community-based alternatives rather than prosecuting them.
“We all think about how do we get the outcome we want, which is basically to get the bad behavior to stop; to have the person take accountability; and if there’s been somebody harmed, to try to right that,” Choi says. He says more youths and their families are participating in these conversations.
Independence and innovation
In February 2024, Choi became the co-chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section Task Force for Prosecutorial Independence.
The task force was created to educate the public about the critical role of prosecutors and followed the ABA’s adoption of Resolution 501 at the 2024 midyear meeting. This measure seeks to protect prosecutorial independence and prevent the removal of elected prosecutors for personal or partisan reasons.
“Our job isn’t just to prosecute cases or to get convictions,” Choi says. “It’s about actually doing justice. That can be really hard in a political environment, and if you’re faced with the possibility of removal by just wanting to do something different or innovative.”
Part of what makes Choi unique is he has been in his role for many years but constantly takes new approaches to his work, says Rachel Marshall, the executive director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution.
“He is a very, very eager learner but also a really impactful leader of other prosecutors, in part because he has accomplished so many things,” says Marshall, who also serves on the Criminal Justice Section’s Task Force for Prosecutorial Independence. “It has elevated his status nationally and given him a real voice among prosecutors who are trying to really be innovators.”
In Ramsey County, where Choi lives with his wife, Youn, and their two teenagers, he plans to continue to bring people together to improve the criminal justice system.
“Today, the conversation is much more nuanced, it’s probably a little bit more emotional, but that’s good because that means people, hopefully, recognize that their voices and their opinions matter,” he says.
This story was originally published in the February-March 2025 issue of the ABA Journal under the headline: “Northern Star: John Choi is leading efforts to redefine justice in Minnesota.”
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