Sep. 24—ST. PAUL — The Minnesota Board of Pardons voted to commute the sentence of Brian Pippitt, who spent over two decades in prison following a conviction of first-degree murder in 2001.
Pippitt was found guilty of first-degree premeditated murder for the 1998 death of Evelyn Malin, a beloved 84-year-old storekeeper in Aitkin County. He was one of several people charged in the murder case.
The Board voted Wednesday, Sept. 24, to commute Pippitt’s sentence based on good behavior in prison and the length of time Pippitt served in prison compared to his codefendants.
The commutation follows a 2024 recommendation from the Conviction Review Unit of the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office that Pippitt be exonerated based on the insurmountable reasonable doubt of Pippitt’s guilt.
The recommendation was based on the unit’s extensive, independent investigation of the conviction. The Conviction Review issued a 118-page report documenting its investigation and the rationale for its recommendation . The report contains 895 footnotes that cite approximately 250 source documents and took core unit staff more than 1,100 hours to complete.
“I am glad Mr. Pippitt’s sentence was commuted today, and I am proud of the work my office’s Conviction Review Unit did to help get us to this point,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a news release. “I created our Conviction Review Unit because, while no system of justice is perfect, we should always strive for perfection and when wrong is done, we must work to correct it. I will continue to do everything I can to help build a more perfect justice system that does right by all Minnesotans.”
Ellison announced the creation of the Conviction Review Unit in the Attorney General’s Office in October 2020. Minnesota’s Conviction Review Unit is one of a handful in the country that operates on a statewide basis through an attorney general’s office.
The unit has found success with other criminal cases.
In January 2023, the work of the unit led to the vacating of Thomas Rhodes’ first and second-degree murder convictions after serious errors were uncovered in the work of the medical examiner whose testimony helped convict Rhodes.
In November 2024, Edgar Barrientos’ murder conviction was vacated after the Conviction Review Unit published a report documenting compelling evidence of Barrientos’ innocence.