Register of Disasters
Date: November 24, 2025
While digging through federal civil-rights cases with a Ramsey County fingerprint, one more name flickered on the radar: Wright v. St. Paul Police Department. Another pro se litigant. Another familiar malfunction. Just like in Strickland v. Ramsey County, et al., the central question isn't about the crime or the conduct - it's about whether the court's own Register of Actions can be trusted as a stable record. Spoiler: it can't.
In Wright's case - D. Minn. No. 0:25-cv-02502-JRT-DLM - the federal filings show two versions of the same court file for his underlying Ramsey criminal case, 62-CR-22-5111. The public-facing MCRO listing plays it straight: entries line up in order, numbers climb like they should, and everything looks neat - maybe too neat. But the internal Register attached in the litigation? That one's off-script. Index numbers jump, events clump, and the filing trail rewrites itself in bundles instead of steps. Sound familiar? It should. That's the same dual-record dance already exposed in Plaintiff's own dockets - and again in Scheffler.
Summary in Context
Plaintiff has long argued that Ramsey County isn't just playing fast and loose - it's running two different court systems side by side. One is the public-facing ROA, MCRO - an "informational only" interface dressed up like a real record. The other? A quiet, lawyer-facing version that gets treated as the official truth, even though it's filterable, editable, and about as stable as a vending machine in a thunderstorm.
Until now, that double ledger lived mostly in Plaintiff's own cases - a broken mirror that always seemed to reflect just her. But now comes Wright. A man in a cell. No connection, no collusion, no reason to mimic anyone's litigation theory. Yet somehow, his docket shows the exact same split-screen problem: two registers, two realities.
Wright isn't tuning in here. He's not echoing strategy. But his filings put the pattern on blast:
- A clean, chronological MCRO record for Case No. 62-CR-22-5111 - one filing per line, index numbers that count like they should.
- And a second, internal ROA - jumpy numbers, bundled events, skips, repeats... déjà vu in digital form.
This isn't a cosmetic glitch. Wright's internal register skips steps, re-orders filings, and groups unrelated actions like it's trying to rewrite the timeline. The same symptoms show up across Plaintiff's own dockets:
- Index numbers that jump out of order - 70s before 50s, future events mixed with retroactive filings;
- Fee entries that wander or change position over time;
- Orders that phase in and out of existence - or wear more than one index badge.
So now the pattern spans two litigants - one navigating the system freely, the other locked behind bars. Different cases. Different officers. Same procedural weirdness. At that point, the excuse file closes. This isn't about "user confusion" or misunderstanding MCRO. It's about infrastructure - an entire county's records framework that can't hold its own shape. The Wright evidence doesn't just support the theory. It confirms the system itself is unstable.
What Wright's Case Shows About Ramsey County
In Strickland v. Ramsey County, Plaintiff alleged that the county's internal ROA system isn't just flawed - it's designed to be. A back-office ledger that can be filtered, reassembled, or sanitized until errors vanish, ADA interactions go dark, and procedural chaos gets rewritten as clean chronology. Now comes Wright - unrelated, unaffiliated - and he brings proof. His internal ROA doesn't just diverge from MCRO; it rewrites the clock.
On paper, the MCRO version of Wright's case reads like it should: one event per entry, index numbers that rise without drama, no backdating, no digital gymnastics. But the attorney-facing version? That's a different book entirely. The pages are out of order. Some entries disappear. Others show up bundled together like they were always meant to be. Same case - different history.
And that's not a formatting issue. It's a structural shift. It changes what the case means. It changes when things happened. And in the legal world, *when* matters. Appeal windows, contempt triggers, late notices, "failure to appear" rulings - all of it depends on a stable record of what happened and when. If Ramsey County's Register of Actions can morph based on who's looking, every safeguard tied to time and sequence collapses.
If the ROA is a shape-shifter, no one's safe: not litigants trying to track their case, not district judges trying to verify notice, not federal courts relying on state-produced filings. Wright's docket shows the same pattern Plaintiff flagged in her own cases. This isn't about user confusion. It's about a system that lets the record tell two stories - and chooses which one to show you. The threat isn't abstract. It's baked into the infrastructure. And it's a direct hit to due process.
Brett Bacon and the "Official" Record
In Plaintiff's federal case, county counsel Brett Bacon doesn't just cite the internal ROA - he treats it like gospel. Never mind the missing filings, the shuffled index numbers, or the events that don't even exist in the public MCRO. To Bacon, the internal version isn't just reliable - it's reality.
But Wright's exhibits crack that open. The same internal ROA, for Case No. 62-CR-22-5111, hits federal court with broken sequences and reordered filings. That's not a typo. It's not a glitch. It's a structural feature of a system that can't keep its own timeline straight - and yet county counsel keeps handing it to the court like it's carved in stone.
Plaintiff argues that this isn't a neutral mistake. When the county submits a reshaped ROA and calls it "official," it's not just filing evidence - it's scripting the story: who got served, who missed a hearing, who hit or missed a deadline. Every missing entry, every re-indexed event, every retroactive insertion becomes a data point with legal weight. And when Bacon defends that reconstruction, he's not fixing the record - he's weaponizing it.
Wright's case proves this isn't a one-off. Different cases. Different parties. Same tactic. A polished MCRO for the public, and a backroom version that says something else entirely. Whether it's intentional or just routine, the result's the same: when the attorney version gets labeled "real," every defect becomes a tool, and every litigant is left holding a record that can change under their feet.
Monell Implications
You don't get Monell liability from a one-time screwup. You need a pattern. A practice. A defect deep enough in the system that it stops looking accidental - and starts looking like policy. At this point, Plaintiff has three clean data points, and they all point to the same thing: Ramsey County's recordkeeping doesn't just wobble - it warps.
- In her own cases, ROA entries haven't just moved - they've vanished, been renumbered, or slipped into the timeline after the fact. Fee notices, hearing dates, you name it - all shifting once objections hit the docket.
- In the Scheffler matter, an unrelated case with a familiar rhythm: index jumps, entries out of order, internal exports that don't match the public view.
- And now Wright. Two ROAs for the same criminal case. Two timelines that can't both be true. One public, one internal - and Plaintiff had nothing to do with either.
On their own, maybe you call them clerical quirks. But together? They form a system. One where Ramsey County runs dual timelines - an MCRO version for public consumption, and a backchannel ROA for counsel. And when courts are shown only the curated version, the rest of us are stuck playing catch-up in a game where the rules keep shifting.
This isn't sloppy filing. It's a structural decision with constitutional fallout. A records framework that can tell different stories to different players - and still be called "official" - is more than bad practice. It's a municipal custom. And under Monell, that custom belongs to Ramsey County. The consequences? Due process violations, ADA interference, and appellate rights buried under altered logs and vanished notice.
What This Means Going Forward
In Strickland v. Ramsey County, et al., Wright's filings aren't about echoing someone else's case. They're about showing that this isn't just Plaintiff's fight. The same broken mechanics - reindexed filings, shuffled timelines, dual versions of the truth - appear in cases that have nothing to do with her. Different dockets. Different judges. Same county playbook.
As discovery moves forward, Plaintiff won't just be tracing what happened. She'll be tracing how it happened. And who signed off. Expect the following on the list:
- Audit logs, metadata trails, and generation scripts - the digital fingerprints behind the internal ROAs labeled "official," including batch exports and automated reshuffling.
- Written policies, training manuals, and internal directives - anything that explains how the ROA is built, modified, and split between what attorneys see and what the public gets.
- Internal emails and memos - especially those where county players, including Bacon, acknowledged the gaps, flagged the inconsistencies, or rehearsed the explanations they'd feed to courts.
Wright's case isn't a detour - it's confirmation. If the "official record" changes based on who's reading it, the entire system bends. And if even one inmate - with no access, no strategy, no agenda - ends up with a timeline that contradicts itself, then nobody's rights are safe. Because in a court system where the record rewrites itself, procedural fairness isn't delayed - it's deleted.