Register of Disasters
Date: November 24, 2025
While reviewing other federal civil-rights matters involving Ramsey County, Plaintiff identified a second pro se case that raises the same core concern at the heart of Strickland v. Ramsey County, et al. : a Register of Actions that does not behave like a stable court record should. In Wright v. St. Paul Police Department. , Case No. 0:25-cv-02502-JRT-DLM (D. Minn.), Plaintiff Antonio Dupree Wright has placed into the federal record two different versions of the ROA for his underlying Ramsey County criminal case, 62-CR-22-5111.
One version-the public-facing Minnesota Court Records Online (MCRO) listing-shows a familiar pattern: each filing appears once, in chronological order, with simple ascending index numbers that read like a straightforward audit trail of the case. The other version-the internal Register of Actions routed through counsel and attached in the federal litigation-does not match that public record. Instead, it presents non-sequential index references, skipped and regrouped entries, and what appears to be post-hoc bundling of events into blocks rather than one-line-per-filing case events. In other words, Wright's file displays the same dual-record behavior that Plaintiff has already documented in her own dockets and in Scheffler.
Summary in Context
Plaintiff has long alleged that Ramsey County maintains two incompatible systems of record: a public ROA (MCRO) explicitly labeled "informational only," and an internal, attorney-facing ROA that is treated as authoritative despite being editable, filterable, and structurally unstable. Until now, that dual-record architecture has primarily appeared in Plaintiff's own proceedings, where the internal ROA repeatedly contradicts the public MCRO listing. The Wright filings mark the first time this same defect surfaces in a case having nothing to do with Plaintiff-removing any possibility that the discrepancy originates from user behavior, familiarity with the system, or litigation strategy.
Wright is an incarcerated pro se civil-rights litigant. He is not reading this archive, coordinating pleadings, or mirroring Plaintiff's theory. Yet his federal submissions independently reveal:
- A clean, chronological MCRO ROA for 62-CR-22-5111, with simple ascending index numbers and one event per entry; and
- An internal "counsel ROA" whose index numbers jump, repeat, and collapse events into grouped blocks-precisely the pattern documented in Plaintiff's own ROAs across multiple Ramsey County dockets.
That structural failure is not subtle. Wright's internal ROA displays skipped numbers, re-ordered filings, and post-hoc bundling of unrelated case events-the same defects that appear throughout Plaintiff's HRO docket, including:
- Index numbers that jump erratically (e.g., the 70-series entries followed by retroactive 50-series fee events);
- Fee and payment entries that move or re-index over time; and
- Orders that appear, vanish, reappear, or receive multiple inconsistent assignments.
When two unrelated litigants-one free, one incarcerated-expose the same contradictions in the same county, across different case types, judicial officers, and procedural postures, the explanation can no longer be "user error," "confusion," or "misunderstanding of MCRO." The only common element is Ramsey County's records infrastructure. The Wright exhibits confirm that the problem is systemic, not situational, and not limited to Plaintiff's case.
What Wright's Case Shows About Ramsey County
In Strickland v. Ramsey County, Plaintiff alleges that county officials are relying on an internal ROA system that is capable of being re-assembled, selectively exported, or filtered in ways that obscure errors, erase ADA-related interactions, and collapse procedural missteps into cleaner narratives. Wright's case now provides independent corroboration: his internal ROA does not simply differ from MCRO-it constructs a fundamentally different timeline of his case.
The public MCRO version of Wright's file presents a conventional one-entry-per-event progression, with ascending index numbers and no retroactive reshuffling. His internal attorney-facing ROA, by contrast, displays non-sequential jumps, regrouped filings, skipped index numbers, and event clusters that do not exist in the public record. The effect is not cosmetic. It is structural. It alters the meaning of the case.
That divergence has immediate and concrete consequences. Every mechanism of procedural protection-appeal deadlines, contempt motions, service disputes, "failure to appear" determinations, and the ability to verify whether a hearing was properly scheduled or properly noticed-depends on the assumption that the Register of Actions is a stable, chronological log. Ramsey County's production of two incompatible versions of the same case history, depending on who is looking, destroys that assumption.
When the ROA is not a fixed record but a variable output, litigants cannot safely rely on it, district judges cannot audit it, and federal courts cannot rely on representations derived from it. Wright's case demonstrates that the instability Plaintiff documented in her own ROAs is not isolated, personal, or situational-it is systemic. It is baked into the county's recordkeeping infrastructure, and it directly threatens the due-process rights of anyone whose case passes through it.
Brett Bacon and the "Official" Record
In Plaintiff's federal case, county counsel Brett Bacon has repeatedly treated the internal ROA as if it were self-authenticating, even when Plaintiff has identified missing filings, reversed index sequences, and events that do not appear in the public MCRO version of the same docket. Wright's exhibits show that this is not an isolated defect. When an internal ROA for 62-CR-22-5111 reaches federal court with broken index numbers and re-ordered entries, that is not a clerical glitch-it is evidence of a systemic record-keeping model that county counsel continues to present as authoritative.
Plaintiff alleges that this reliance is not neutral. When the county submits an internally reconstructed ROA and asks a court to treat it as the "official" timeline, it shapes the narrative of what occurred: who filed what, who received notice, whether a litigant failed to appear, and whether a deadline was met. Each irregularity-missing entries, retroactive insertions, or index jumps-directly affects those determinations. By defending these internal ROAs as accurate, Bacon converts a data-management failure into a litigation tool.
Wright's case confirms that this tool is not being used against a single litigant. Two unrelated cases-one civil, one criminal; one housed in the county, one incarcerated-show the same pattern: a clean MCRO record and an internal ROA that tells a different story. Whether intentional or not, the effect is the same. When counsel insists that the internal version is the "real" one, every structural defect in that system becomes a mechanism for misrepresentation, and every litigant becomes vulnerable to it.
Monell Implications
Monell liability requires more than a single bad act. It requires a pattern, practice, or systemic defect attributable to the municipality itself-either through an established policy, a widespread custom, or a deliberate indifference to constitutional violations. Plaintiff now has three independent data points demonstrating that Ramsey County's record systems behave in ways incompatible with a stable judicial process:
- Her own dockets-where ROA entries have moved, disappeared, re-numbered, or been retroactively inserted after she raised objections, including fee events and hearing notices that shifted positions in the index.
- The Scheffler filings-where index anomalies and out-of-sequence entries surfaced in an unrelated matter, reflecting the same structural inconsistencies in Ramsey County's internal ROA exports.
- Wright's case-where two ROAs for the same criminal file present incompatible timelines, including broken index sequences and grouped events that do not appear in the public MCRO version. These contradictions arise without any involvement or influence from Plaintiff.
Considered individually, each example could be dismissed as clerical error. Considered together, they describe a unified pattern: Ramsey County maintains two conflicting case-record systems, and county personnel-including counsel-treat the internal, editable version as the governing one while disclaiming the publicly accessible MCRO record as "informational only." This structure allows staff and counsel to curate which version of the timeline a court sees, to the detriment of litigants whose rights depend on stable notice, reliable sequencing, and transparent judicial records.
This is not simply imperfect recordkeeping. It is a system design choice with constitutional consequences. A dual-record architecture that produces contradictory timelines across multiple cases-and is repeatedly defended as "official" when challenged-reflects a municipal custom that interferes with due process, frustrates ADA access, and undermines meaningful appellate review. Under Monell, such a practice is attributable to Ramsey County itself.
What This Means Going Forward
For Strickland v. Ramsey County, et al., Wright's documentation is not about importing another litigant's grievances. It is about demonstrating that Ramsey County's record-keeping failures are not confined to a single plaintiff, a single referee, or a single docket. The same structural defects appear in unrelated criminal and civil cases, across different judicial officers, and in matters handled by the same county attorneys and administrators named as defendants in this action.
As discovery proceeds, Plaintiff will seek:
- Audit logs, metadata trails, and generation scripts for the internal ROA that Ramsey County treats as "official," including any batch-processing or export functions;
- Written policies, instructions, training materials, and technical manuals governing how ROAs are created, modified, and exported for counsel versus how they are exported for MCRO;
- Internal communications in which county officials-including Bacon-discussed ROA irregularities, acknowledged index inconsistencies, or drafted explanations intended for courts or litigants.
Wright's case underscores that the stakes of this litigation extend far beyond a single HRO or a single plaintiff. If Ramsey County"s "official" memory can be re-sequenced, re-numbered, or selectively exported depending on audience, then no litigant-not even one who is incarcerated with no independent access to MCRO-can rely on the accuracy of the record. A court system where the timeline itself is unstable is a court system in which procedural rights cannot meaningfully be exercised.