Nearly four years have passed since Jasmine Sturm and her brother Matthew Pettus were murdered along with two friends in an SUV in St. Paul. For their mother, Angela Sturm, the healing process really began a year ago.

“I started some grief counseling, and that has worked wonders,” Sturm said, adding she also created a podcast that focuses on grief. “It’s really helped me kind of process through some things, and just speak them out loud.”

Much of that first year after the September 2021 killings was a blur, she said. She was consumed with caring for three young grandchildren who suddenly lost a parent and being a mom to her youngest son, Zachary Pettus, who was 24 and lost his two best friends.

Nitosha Lee Flug-Presley, Loyace Foreman III, Matthew Pettus and Jasmine Sturm, from left to right, were found fatally shot in a Dunn County, Wis., cornfield on Sept. 12, 2021. (Courtesy photos)

Then came the two-week jury trial of Antoine Suggs, who in May 2023 was convicted in the murders of Pettus, 26, Sturm, 30, Loyace Foreman III, 35, and Nitosha Flug-Presley, 30.

Suggs, who had dumped his SUV with their bodies in a western Wisconsin cornfield, was given a 103-year prison term at sentencing.

Through it all, Sturm said, a constant source of support came from a small group within the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office called the victim-witness advocate unit, one she now acknowledges she “didn’t even know existed.”

Her introduction began with a phone call from victim advocate Curtis Bakken, then from his co-worker Becky Redetzke Field, who joined the case because of its magnitude.

“They’re the one thing that’s steady,” Sturm said, adding they helped guide three families through the court process and still keep in touch. “They’re the one thing that’s like an anchor.”

Sturm and three victim advocates shared their stories with the Pioneer Press as part of National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, which is being observed through Saturday. The week, which has been held every April since 1981, raises awareness and educates the public about the rights and resources available to victims and survivors.

‘An awesome responsibility’

Bakken and Redetzke Field started on the same day in January 2017 and are now among the longest-tenured of the 13 victim-witness advocates at the attorney’s office. Seven are full time, averaging 240 cases at any given time and working to ensure that victims are receiving the services defined under the Minnesota Crime Victim Bill of Rights.

The legislation, enacted in 1983, includes rights for victims to participate in the prosecution process, be notified when an offender is released from jail or prison and be eligible for restitution.

“I like to say that our job is sort of a strange customer service position of the criminal justice system,” Redetzke Field said. “We’re the ones who answer, and I think a lot of the victims and witnesses that we work with know that.”

The criminal justice system can be complicated, slow and frustrating for victims, Bakken said. “They want to know why there’s another continuance,” he said. “They want to know why we’re resolving a case the way we’re resolving a case.”

In that regard, he said, communication and building trust are essential.

“It’s an awesome responsibility to be in this role, because you are working with really vulnerable people,” he said. “And so to be able to navigate that and hope that at the end of the day you made the process better, that’s what’s so rewarding about the job.”

Bakken was an intern at the attorney’s office while studying pre-law in college, then left to be a juvenile probation officer in Dakota County. He liked working with kids, but missed the courtroom.

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“There’s something about the impact that you have with people who are pretty much going through the worst time in their life,” he said. “And so it’s a huge honor to be able to walk through that space with them and try to make it a little bit better.”

Redetzke Field studied cinema, media culture and anthropology in college, yet went on to work as a confidential advocate for nine years at the Aurora Center, the University of Minnesota’s on-campus resource for victims of sexual assault and related violence.

“We have other folks who came from similar backgrounds as me,” she said of her work with victims of sexual assault. “And we have advocates who came from very different, diverse jobs. But all had some kind of customer service component.”

‘Fighting for the victim’

From left, Ramsey County Attorney’s Office victim-witness advocates Bill Kubes, Becky Redetzke Field and Curtis Bakken, along with certified facility dog Norie, at the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office in downtown St. Paul on March 28, 2025. (Nick Ferraro / Pioneer Press)

Bill Kubes spent 14 years as a Minneapolis police officer before joining the victim-witness advocate unit in June 2017.

“I wish I would have jumped into this right away in my career,” he said. “It’s amazing. I love coming to work.”

As an officer, he went from call to call without learning about the outcome. Now he works with victims and witnesses for months, sometimes over a year.

“We’re fighting for the victim,” he said. “And what I really think is awesome about this is the relationship we have with people here is so good that I’m able to go to a prosecutor and say, ‘Hey, you know, here’s the victim’s input on this.’”

In every case, he said, he asks himself what his family would want to know and how they would want to be treated.

“I tell them to call me anytime, ‘I’m there for you.’ So my gratitude is knowing I helped them through that process,” he said. “And sometimes it’s a good closure, sometimes it isn’t. But you do the best you can.”

Kubes has a partner, Norie, the unit’s golden retriever, that offers up soothing support to victims at meetings or before testimony in high-trauma court cases. The attorney’s office brought the certified facility dog into the mix in 2019.

Norie, who turns 8 next week, has her own trading card, which Kubes passes out to kids.

“I use her for almost all my cases,” said Kubes, who cares for Norie when she’s off duty. “But I make sure the person wants her. Is it necessary? No. But as soon as they meet her, they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you for doing this.’”

Last year, Norie worked her first court trial in a juvenile criminal sexual conduct case, sitting right at the victim’s feet while she testified.

Increased caseload

Victim advocate caseloads have more than doubled over the past seven years, from 94 in 2017 to 233 last year, according to attorney’s office data.

Tami McConkey, director of the Victim, Witness and Postconviction Justice Division, said the reasons for the surging caseload include increases in the number of people charged with crimes and a big upswing in Rule 20 cases, which involve a psychiatrist providing an opinion about whether the defendant qualifies for a mental-illness defense.

“Rule 20 cases have just skyrocketed since the pandemic, like 200% or something,” McConkey said. “And so for all of our advocates, the challenge is that those cases don’t resolve because we keep waiting to see if the defendant becomes competent, and the victims then remain on their caseload.”

Despite the influx of cases, feedback the attorney’s office receives from victims after they are resolved is encouraging, said Amy Hansen, who supervises the advocate unit.

“The feedback we get is, ‘They were there for me, they understood me,’ even if they didn’t get the result that they wanted,” said Hansen, who was a victim advocate for 23 years. “They talk about their professionalism and their empathy.”

The attorney’s office has been intentional about hiring decisions so it mirrors the diverse community it serves, she said. A Karen-speaking advocate was just hired, joining others who speak Hmong, Spanish and Somali.

“We’ve learned so much about Hmong funerals, about how to attend a meeting with a Karen individual,” she said. “How to maybe not shake a hand or look someone in the eye. How to make someone comfortable when they don’t know the system, don’t know the language. They work with interpreters so closely.”

When the cases are resolved, victims are often referred to nonprofits that deal with grief and healing, such as Survivor Resources. Its St. Paul roots go back to 1995, when it was called the Victim Intervention Project.

“What we found is that in the court case, a lot of families, they’re not really grieving,” said Colleen Luna, executive director of Survivor Resources, which has offices at the St. Paul and Minneapolis police departments. “Your grief is put on hold while you deal with this foreign body that is the criminal justice system.”

Survivor Resources offers weekly support groups for families and loved ones who are suffering a similar loss from a homicide, suicide, an accident or overdose death. They’re held in North St. Paul, Forest Lake, Apple Valley and St. Louis Park, as well as virtual.

“So we do the follow up,” said Luna, a former St. Paul police commander who joined the nonprofit in 2016. “It’s great to hold someone accountable for the death of your loved one, but that doesn’t make the grief go away.”

‘I was able to let it go’

Angela Sturm felt as though she could not even cry until the trial of her children’s killer was over. When it was, she felt the void.

Angela Sturm at her Columbia Heights home. Sturm has found comfort in grief counseling and in hosting a podcast on grieving. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“Once we got through that, and then there was nothing left for me to do, you kind of just sit with yourself,” she said. “I myself began to spiral, and I was like, ‘I’m not doing well.’ ”

She leaned on weekly grief counseling.

“I found a therapist that works with me that understands my personality and thinks the same,” said Sturm, whose mother died two months before her children. “I’m science-y, so I don’t want to read self-help books. I want science to be like, ‘Why does your brain respond like this? Why do we feel like this?’ All the whys will never really be answered, but just to have somebody that kind of takes the place of my kids and my mom to talk to is really, really helpful.”

And she started her podcast “Beyond Goodbye” that “empowers listeners to engage with death and grief in a healthy and transformative way.” Her first episode, “Bodies in a Cornfield” tells the story of her children’s murders and tackles the difference between grief and grieving. Her son, Zachary, was the guest.

Sturm said she started the podcast, which she records and produces from her home in Columbia Heights, to honor her children and mother. It has evolved into hearing stories of others who’ve lost someone.

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Sturm has had podcast conversations with former Red Sox pitcher John Trautwein, whose teen son died by suicide, and Damone Presley, father of Nitosha Flug-Presley, who died alongside Sturm’s children. Sturm and Presley talked about forgiveness.

Sturm is partial to Native and Indigenous practices. She realized that if she wanted to heal and move forward in her “walk” of healing and grieving, she had to “release” her children’s killer from her head.

“And so I was able to let it go,” she said. “Within months, I started to heal, and everything that went wacko was coming back to normal. A Christian would say, forgive. For me, it’s release.”

For more information on crime victim resources across Minnesota, including 24-hour hotlines, go to dps.mn.gov/resources-for/crime-victim-resources.

As a psychological researcher studying the intersection of empathy, ideological extremism and social influence, I have spent years analyzing the mechanisms by which belief systems spread and take hold.

After interviewing hundreds of students, I have observed how these dynamics materialize. One of the most provocative, and fundamentally contentious, trends I have identified is how radical empathy has been weaponized to fuel ideological extremism on American college campuses.

What was once a noble impulse — the ability to assimilate and share the feelings of others — has, in its most unmitigated form, become a liability, one that foreign adversaries and domestic radicals alike have learned to exploit.

In the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, I witnessed an extraordinary surge of student activism at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, where many students rushed to declare unwavering support for the Palestinian cause.

However, what proved particularly conspicuous was the fervor of their activism and the pronounced absence of critical thought underpinning it. For many students, allegiance to Palestine was less about a sophisticated understanding of geopolitical realities and more about aligning with a prescribed moral stance shaped not by historical analysis but by the relentless cultural conditioning of radical empathy.

Determined to understand the roots of this phenomenon, I traveled to Dearborn, Michigan, in November 2023 to attend a community meeting where local leaders strategized their response to the Israel-Hamas war. What I heard was both illuminating and alarming: a calculated effort to leverage America’s emotional susceptibility to advance an ideological agenda.

Organizers spoke explicitly about using social media to manipulate Western narratives, exploiting empathy as a tool to dismantle American institutions from within. It was a real-time case study in the psychological mechanics of influence and persuasion, which I had the opportunity to observe firsthand.

As a researcher, I am now compelled to ask: Can a society have too much empathy? The assumption that empathy is an unqualified good has led to a dangerous oversimplification of multifaceted sociopolitical issues. In its most radical form, empathy demands unconditional allegiance to perceived victims, often at the expense of truth, reason and moral clarity.

This phenomenon is particularly pervasive in academic settings, where the prioritization of emotional identification over intellectual discipline has rendered universities vulnerable to ideological infiltration. The very institutions meant to champion critical thinking have instead become breeding grounds for emotional manipulation.

This is not an abstract concern — it is an observable trend with real consequences. My research into the psychological foundations of extremism has shown that radical movements rely on a three-step process: emotional priming, ideological reframing and behavioral reinforcement.

First, students are primed through exposure to narratives that depict a binary world of oppressors and oppressed. Then, these narratives are reframed within the context of Western guilt, positioning radical activism as a moral imperative. Finally, students are socially rewarded for their participation, reinforcing ideological adherence and discouraging dissent.

This process is especially insidious because it co-opts one of the most deeply ingrained American values — empathy — and turns it against itself. The result is a generation of students who, believing themselves to be warriors of justice, inadvertently provide cover for extremist ideologies.

I saw this very strategy in Dearborn, where activists explicitly articulated their goal: use Western empathy as a Trojan horse for ideological conquest at the University of Michigan. I urgently appealed to President Santa Ono numerous times, seeking the opportunity to share firsthand what I witnessed in Dearborn — but each request was met with silence.

I interviewed 360 undergraduates at Northwestern University, and data from my research there revealed that 81% of students on campus feel pressured by faculty to take a stance on the Middle East conflict, yet 74% privately admit they have little personal investment in the issue.

In confidential interviews, students voiced deep frustration that their academic experience is being eclipsed by ideological imperatives, with many lamenting the intrusion of political conformity into spaces meant for intellectual and professional growth. Psychological models on social coercion and performative activism confirm that when authority figures set the terms of discourse, students often comply out of obligation rather than belief. The evidence is clear: Universities are not encouraging independent thought but manufacturing ideological participation.

Today, the implications of this trend extend far beyond campus protests. Suppose radical empathy continues to undermine critical thought in academia. In that case, we risk engendering a society where emotional reflex overrides reasoned analysis, moral intelligibility is abandoned to ideological orthodoxy and the very freedoms that define America are compromised by those who profess to protect them.

Acknowledging this issue is not enough. Universities must recommit themselves to intellectual discipline, ensuring that empathy is balanced by reason. Public discourse must resist the seduction of emotional absolutism, demanding instead that moral arguments be grounded in fact and logic. And above all, we must recognize that empathy, like any other human faculty, can be corrupted when left unchecked.

If we fail to address this crisis, the consequences will be devastating. The next generation will not inherit a society built on genuine understanding and progress, but one defined by ideological extremism masquerading as compassion. In studying the psychology of influence, I have learned that ideas do not spread in a vacuum — they are shaped, nurtured and directed by those who understand the power of belief.

It is time we reclaim that power for the cause of reason before it is too late.

Kevin Waldman is a psychological researcher at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan, specializing in the cognitive and developmental mechanisms underlying adolescent susceptibility to extremism. He wrote this column for the Chicago Tribune.

By STEVE REED

AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) — Attending the Masters for the first time was a new experience for Thomas Abraham, and it wasn’t just about the golf.

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The 16-year-old from Houston had the rare opportunity to use a public telephone for the first time.

“It was kind of cool,” said Abraham, who phoned a friend while attending the Masters Par 3 competition on Wednesday with his father, Sid. “I’ve never used one before. I figured it out. If I had to use one of those (rotary) phones I probably would’ve had to ask my dad.”

Augusta National requires its patrons to leave their cellphones and other electronic devices behind. In place of those security blankets, there are several public telephone banks of those throwback devices from days gone by. They are a foreign sight for many in the younger generation who’ve never seen a phone with an attached cord.

Abraham is not unlike most teenagers — or adults, for that matter — who are very much attached to the world through their cellphones.

At some point, chances are, patrons check for their phone — patting their pockets, reaching for the clip on their belts, wherever it usually is.

And when they can’t find it, well…

“It’s kind of panic mode,” Abraham said. “We were at 18th (hole) and I went to reach in my pocket and it wasn’t there. Then I remembered it’s in the car.”

He wasn’t alone.

“I’ve checked my pockets for my phone no less than 10 times today,” said Ryan O’Connor from Little Rock, Arkansas. “I was sitting in the bleachers on the 16th green and someone dropped a water bottle and it made a loud noise and I instinctively reached for my phone. Not there.”

The line at the public phone bank can stretch up to 10 people deep at the height of the Masters. And while they provide an outlet for those looking to touch base with the world outside of Augusta National’s gates, there are some issues that come with them.

Like, remembering phone numbers.

Bill Kehoe, 50, from Raleigh, North Carolina came prepared.

As he approached the public phones, Kehoe whipped out a sheet of paper with a handful of names and numbers written on them with a black Sharpie. He picked up the receiver on the phone, punched in the number “1” to start the call and then looked down at the paper and entered the remaining numbers to complete the free call.

“I can’t even remember my own phone number, let alone anyone else’s number,” Kehoe joked. “They’re all saved in my phone.”

One of the calls he made was to his 14-year-old son Connor, who was on a school fieldtrip to Washington. D.C.

Connor had asked his dad to call at a prearranged time while he was on a bus, and his 8th grade classmates were shocked when his caller ID popped popped up as “Augusta National Golf Club.”

“You could hear all of the kids like, ‘Oh, that’s so cool!,” Kehoe said with a laugh. “But then they all started asking for merchandise so I had to hang up.”

The reasons patrons disrupt their round of watching professional golf to make a call.

One person was calling to hear about the day’s dramatic movement in the stock market. Another said he was checking in with work. And several others were simply touching base with family or loved ones.

Tyler Johnson and his wife Lauren called home to Roswell, Georgia to check on their 5-year-old son, who is staying with his grandparents, “just to make sure there’s no blood,” Tyler said with a laugh. As mom and dad alternated talking to their son, they took pictures of each other talking on the odd-looking black public phone.

“I think the last time I used one of these was 1999, before Y2K, I think,” Tyler joked.

While not having a cellphone is an inconvenience for some, others have come to relish the liberating feeling of being disconnected from the world for a little while.

Fletcher Lord from Little Rock texted his wife after he arrived at the course around 6 a.m. and reminded her not to expect to hear from him all day. He then set out to enjoy a few refreshments on a sunny, 70-degree day amid the serene backdrop of blooming azaleas and tall pines.

“Once you get over the anxiety of not having your phone, it’s a very freeing feeling because it forces you to just be here in the moment,” Lord said.

O’Connor agreed.

He phoned one of his old friends from high school just to see if he’d pick up. He did.

“He didn’t recognize the number obviously, but when he saw Augusta National pop up he said I better pick this one up,” O’Connor said.

Then it was off to enjoy the day.

“Is not having a phone a pain?” O’Connor said. “No, I think it’s actually good for me. Those emails will be there when I get back home.”

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Commentators keep pointing to the Trump administration’s Supreme Court “wins” over the past several days in cases involving the whirlwind of his executive orders, but in legal terms there’s a lot less to the victories than meets the eye.

Friday’s decision allowing the Department of Education to end $65 million in grants was really about the venue where the lawsuits should be brought. Tuesday’s ruling that the government can proceed with forced deportations of alleged gang members arrived with safeguards that the administration sought to deny. The real news shouldn’t be which party prevailed but what the justices actually said.

Regarding the grants

First, the grants.

According to the Trump administration, the agencies that sued the Education Department for canceling grants filed their actions in the wrong court. The grants in question were previously approved under the Teacher Quality Partnership and the Supporting Effective Educator Development programs. The termination letters placed the decision principally on the grounds that the grants were funding DEI and other “unlawful” initiatives. The plaintiffs argued that whether or not the Trump administration shares the priorities of its predecessors is beside the point. The grants had already been awarded; the department and the grantees had signed on the dotted line. The government breached the contract.

The administration’s response is that even if all this is true — if the plaintiffs are, in fact, entitled to damages for breach of contract — the lawsuits should not have been filed in federal district court. The government argued they should have been filed in the Court of Federal Claims, which has exclusive jurisdiction over contract actions against federal agencies. A majority of the justices agreed, overturning the trial court’s restraining order on basically this ground. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s thoughtful dissent argued that a federal district court can hear a challenge to what amounts to a change in policy, and in any case, there was no emergency justifying the majority’s decision to allow the Education Department to “jump the line” rather than moving through the usual process of trial and appeal.

Whichever side you might think is right, the important point is that the Supreme Court did not hold that the Trump administration is free to abrogate its contracts because it happens not to like DEI. The ruling was only that the suits were filed in the wrong place. It’s true that in the Court of Federal Claims the wheels of justice might indeed grind slowly. But that’s where every other plaintiff has to go to resolve assertions that the feds have breached a contract.

Regarding the instant deportations

And speaking of the slowness of justice, let’s consider for a moment the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for instant deportations, on which the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday. Here, too, the headlines seem not to have the court’s decision quite right.

Critics have argued, among other things, that the Alien Enemies Act is an outdated and rarely used statute. Here, I largely agree with Harvard legal scholar Jack Goldsmith, who wrote of the dispute that the age of a statute “is irrelevant to the authority it confers.” Goldsmith, no fan of Trump’s approach to questions of legality, further argues that the merits of this particular exercise of presidential power under the Alien Enemies Act are trickier than much of the rather superficial media coverage suggests.

But the question of whether the administration has the power to deport those immigrants it considers dangerous is distinct from whether that power can be exercised summarily. A majority of the Supreme Court said no. In particular, the justices went back almost 80 years to find a precedent for the proposition that in a case involving summary deportation, the target has the right to a court hearing on whether he or she “is in fact an alien enemy fourteen years of age or older.”

Thus, those marked by the administration for removal must be given the opportunity to challenge the factual basis of their deportations. The justices ruled that those challenges should be heard in Texas not Washington, but the key is that the targets of the sweeping deportation orders have the right to fight them.

Ironically, had the Trump administration chosen from the beginning to allow some semblance of due process, it would not now find itself in the legally and morally ridiculous position of arguing that an innocent deportee swept up by accident has no recourse but to remain in a Salvadoran prison. Perhaps the hearings to come will weed out others who should have been exempt in the first place. Yes, the wheels will grind slowly, but here that’s surely to the good. It’s in the rush to action that errors are most likely to be made.

To be sure, there are other issues at stake in the cases, regarding when a temporary restraining order can be appealed (old rule: almost never; new rule: almost sometimes); and how the Supreme Court should treat cases filed on its emergency docket rather than through the usual appellate process (old rule: use rarely; new rule: hey, this is fun!); and under which circumstances federal trial judges can issue injunctions covering the entire country (old rule and new rule: oops, there is no rule). Those disputes might seem technical and lawyerly, but given the endless lawsuits predictably sparked by the Trump administration’s endless string of orders, they’re likely to prove important indeed.

Whatever happens going forward, let’s all keep our eyes not on which side “wins” but on what the courts actually say.

Stephen L. Carter is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of law at Yale University and author of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster.”