The officer, Travis Serafin, was an 18-year veteran of the Eden Prairie Police Department. Eden Prairie is a suburb of Minneapolis, and Serafin worked as an investigator with the Southwest Hennepin Drug Task Force.

On June 17, 2017, a young woman named Maggie Lane died of a fentanyl overdose. A police investigation found that Lane contacted a man named Timothy Holmes three days before her death to arrange a trade of her anti-anxiety medication for other drugs. The investigation continued for most of the summer.

On September 13 and September 14, Serafin drafted a search-warrant application to search Holmes and his home in south Minneapolis. Serafin took the application to Judge Jay Quam of Hennepin County District Court on September 14, where it was approved and signed.

Officers executed the search on September 15. Their search included Holmes’s car, which was not included on the application. The officers recovered a large amount of heroin and some fentanyl from the house, and a smaller quantity of drugs from the car.

The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office charged Holmes with first-degree drug sales and third-degree murder in Lane’s death. Serafin then sent a summary of the investigation and copy of the search warrant to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office. A prosecutor noted the absence of a search warrant for the vehicle and asked Serafin for an explanation. On September 22, 2017, Serafin printed out a new cover sheet for the search-warrant application, one that included a request to search vehicles. He attached the falsified coversheet to the warrant application with Judge Quam’s signature and sent it to the prosecutor.

As the case moved to trial, Holmes’s attorney raised questions about the evidence seized, including the presence of two search warrants. The prosecutor asked Serafin to write a supplemental report. Serafin wrote, in part:

During the investigation, I had 2 versions of a warrant for Holmes’s person and the property at 3316 4th Ave #1 in Minneapolis. The warrants were reviewed and signed by Judge Quam of the Hennepin County District court. I had both versions signed at the same time. The version that included the vehicles and outbuildings associated with the property was the final version of the warrant. That is the version that the warrant was executed under and filed with Hennepin County by me."

At a hearing before Judge Fred Karasov of Hennepin County District Court on February 23, 2018, Serafin first provided testimony consistent with his written report. Serafin later backtracked, and said he was not sure Judge Quam signed both at the same time. He admitted that he realized the omission on his way to get the initial search warrant signed and then had a new application created and signed by the judge.

Serafin later acknowledged that the supplemental report was inaccurate, although he also said it was based on his recollection of the events at the time he wrote the report. His attorneys argued that Serafin was “not deliberately untruthful, nor was he trying to deceive the court or to violate Mr. Holmes’ rights as a criminal defendant.”

Prior to any ruling on his motion to suppress, Holmes pled guilty to first-degree drug sales on March 16, 2018. The state dismissed the murder charge. The court sentenced him to six years in prison. On March 29, 2018, Karasov contacted the Eden Prairie Police Department, to raise concerns about the truthfulness of Serafin’s testimony.

The department began an investigation, interviewing Serafin and examining his computer, his drives, and his email. A month later, the investigators submitted their findings to Eden Prairie Chief of Police Jim DeMann.

On May 31, DeMann informed Serafin that the investigation found that Serafin knowingly changed part of the search warrant after the judge signed it; that he been untruthful in his supplemental report and his February 23 testimony that Judge Quam had signed two warrants; and that the search of Holmes’s vehicles had been conducted without a warrant.

After the police department informed the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office of these findings, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Brown determined that this misconduct would need to be disclosed to the defense in every case for which Serafin worked, beginning September 22, 2017, and in any future case. The office said it could never again permit Serafin to be called as a witness. Brown said this was an “extreme step,” and one the office had never taken before.

The police department fired Serafin on November 6, 2018, citing the Hennepin County Attorney’s decision to not allow him to testify. The department said that “as a direct result of your conduct you are no longer able to perform all of the essential functions of your position and can no longer be employed by the City of Eden Prairie.”

Brown’s office also began vacating convictions in cases where Serafin had either been the affiant on the search warrant or otherwise critical to the case. Sean Donzell Cole’s conviction for third-degree drug sales was vacated on October 17, 2018. He had been serving a 34-month prison sentence.

Holmes filed a motion on October 12, 2018, to withdraw his guilty plea. Judge Karasov granted the motion on October 25, 2018, saying it was absolutely necessary and a “travesty of justice. This is not the way things are supposed to work.”

Thirty other defendants had their convictions vacated and charges dismissed. Their records have been expunged, making it impossible to know their exact charges.

On November 9, 2018, Serafin filed a grievance against Eden Prairie, claiming he was unjustly terminated. The case went to arbitration with five days of hearings in November and December 2019.

On March 12, 2020, Arbitrator Joseph Daly ordered the city to reinstate Serafin. Daly said that what city officials called false testimony and falsification of records were simple errors made during a time when Serafin was working at a feverish pace while also dealing with stressful personal issues involving his family.

“It is this arbitrator’s conclusion that rather than being a liar, and a falsifier of a search warrant, Mr. Serafin is a credible witness who made a mistake,” Daly wrote. “The mistake was failing to “X out” a box from a drop-down menu on the application page of the packet for a search warrant. He failed to recognize that, and he continued to fail to recognize that until a series of dreadful consequences occurred which was based on a simple human mistake.”

Before being reinstated, Serafin voluntarily left the Eden Prairie Police Department. Separate from Serafin’s employment was the question of whether he should be charged with a crime. When Hennepin prosecutors made the decision to ban Serafin from future courtroom appearances, they were in possession of his interview with the police. That interview was considered compelled testimony since cooperation with an internal affairs investigation was required of the city’s police officers. As the testimony was compelled, it could not be used against Serafin in a criminal case. Hennepin prosecutors were aware of its contents, and the decision about charges was transferred to McLeod County Attorney Michael Junge.

In a report released May 31, 2019, Junge concluded charges could not be brought against Serafin for either forgery or perjury. On the forgery charge, Junge wrote that altering an application did not impact a genuine legal right. The search of the car was already illegal. The same logic applied to Serafin’s alleged perjury, which Junge said was not material to the case at hand. Despite those conclusions not to prosecute, Junge said that Serafin had given false testimony that “certainly negatively impacts the credibility of Officer Serafin in this and all other matters he has worked on.”

— Ken Otterbourg