Live: Nicole Mitchell testifies ‘I regret what happened’ over alleged break-in

Democratic state Sen. Nicole Mitchell took the witness stand in her burglary trial for a full day of testimony Thursday.

Mitchell is accused of breaking into her late father’s Detroit Lakes home to allegedly retrieve mementos. Her stepmother, Carol Mitchell, called 911, and officers found Nicole Mitchell in the basement wearing all black. A crowbar was later discovered in an egress window. She has pleaded not guilty.

Nicole Mitchell wore a beige sweater and light blue tie-neck blouse, her hair was pulled back and she appeared nervous as her testimony got underway.

If she is convicted of a felony, it could tip the balance of power in the state Senate, where her party controls the chamber by a single vote.

The defense has repeatedly told the jury that Mitchell was concerned about the well-being of her 75-year-old stepmother, who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Much of the trial has focused on the disease and less about the alleged burglary. Carol Mitchell provided shaky testimony during which she was unable to recall names and dates and didn’t recognize the crowbar found in the egress window later that morning of the break-in on April 22, 2024.

Follow live updates below:

4:19 p.m. - After a brief series of final questions from both defense and prosecution attorneys, Nicole Mitchell left the stand after almost a full day of testimony. The defense will continue Friday with testimony from several more witnesses in the case.

— Briana Bierschbach

4:08 p.m. - Prosecutors asked Nicole Mitchell how her late father would have felt about the incident.

“I think he would be very sad by this whole situation and that he would support me because he loved Carol,” she said. “And even if I did it the wrong way, he would have wanted me to do my best to take care of her.”

Prosecutors ended their questioning.

— Briana Bierschbach

4:03 p.m. - The prosecutors said the Facebook post Nicole Mitchell put out shortly after the incident was “completely inconsistent” with the body camera footage from her arrest. She said her arrest was leaked to the media and she “watched my life unfold on the jailhouse television.”

“I wanted people to understand that, all the craziness, that there was more to the story. I also wanted to de-escalate it, because I could see from what I watched that the press was starting to hound Carol,” she said. “I genuinely did believe it was a family matter.”

— Briana Bierschbach

3:52 p.m. - Prosecutors pointed out that Nicole Mitchell never mentioned on the night of the alleged break-in that she was there to check in on Carol Mitchell. They also asked her why she said she knew she had done something bad on the night of the incident. Nicole Mitchell said it was bad because she had “scared Carol to death.”

The prosecution said she mentioned wanting a couple of pictures and a flannel shirt of her father’s, suggesting they were specific items even though she said she was lying about her reason for being there. They also asked her why she would have said: “Clearly, I’m not good at this.”

“Again just a brilliant lie you were able to craft under the pressure of being arrested?” prosecutors asked. They pointed out that Nicole Mitchell dressed in all black and wore a stocking cap. She said it was a long underwear set she bought at Target and it was cold outside. The prosecutor pointed out that it was 49 degrees outside that day.

“You’re [a meteorologist] not me,” the prosecutor said.

— Briana Bierschbach

3:34 p.m. - At the end of questioning from the defense, Nicole Mitchell’s attorneys asked that if she lied to police on the night of the incident, how is the jury supposed to believe that she’s not lying now?

Nicole Mitchell said she was struggling to answer any questions from officers that morning.

“Sometimes to protect family members you have to lie,” she said, adding: “I know it might be hard to believe, because when it comes to family and protecting them, sometimes I have to make a choice I wouldn’t otherwise. I am a person who acts with integrity, I am a person whose word means something,” she said to close.

The prosecutors began questioning Nicole Mitchell.

— Briana Bierschbach

3:20 p.m. - Nicole Mitchell’s attorney asked why she told the police she was there to grab a few of her father’s things, which contradicted her testimony.

Nicole Mitchell said she was “very sorry I said that, and it wasn’t true.”

“So why say it?” her attorney asked.

Nicole Mitchell said she was “very stressed out” and she was worried that her stepmother would be upset if she heard she was there for a welfare check.

“It was one of the only things I could think of to say that wasn’t one of the actually true things that would set her off,” she said.

— Briana Bierschbach

3:15 p.m. - After they returned from break, defense attorneys asked Nicole Mitchell about a checklist that was found in her backpack. The list said “cell” and “do not disturb.” She said she was checking that Carol Mitchell’s cell was not turned into a mode where she could not reach her. She also wanted to make sure she wasn’t deleting text messages and contacts that she needed to reach in the case of an emergency. Lower in the list, she also wrote “add tracking.” Nicole Mitchell said she wanted to make sure there was a mode on her phone to locate her with GPS in case she got lost.

— Briana Bierschbach

2:57 p.m. - “She’s a really good actress,” said Gerry Schram, 78, a former Becker County commissioner who has been observing the entire trial. He called the proceedings “free entertainment.”

During a court break, Schram said he’s not sure of the makeup of the jury and whether they will believe Nicole Mitchell’s story about being so concerned for Carol Mitchell that she broke into her house to check on her.

— Kim Hyatt

2:34 p.m. - Nicole Mitchell said she thought Carol Mitchell knew it was her in the house, so Nicole Mitchell waited in the downstairs bathroom for the police to arrive to “calm this down.” Her attorneys asked if she took anything from the house or intended to take any items that belonged to Carol Mitchell or her late father.

She said her dad’s preferred area was in the basement and she could have walked away with items of his if she had intended to steal things and never woke Carol Mitchell upstairs. “Stuff is never more important than the person, and I was just worried. I was always more worried about Carol and whether she was OK,” Nicole Mitchell said.

“I understand that I did the wrong thing. To me, it felt different that it was my parents’ house and I had a key and I had been in and out of there for years. If you’re walking down the stairs, it’s on the video, there’s one of my [campaign] signs. My kids’ toys are still in the basement. It felt different,” she said, clarifying that she did not have permission to be there.

— Briana Bierschbach

2:27 p.m. - Nicole Mitchell said she jumped into the well of an egress window and the wood was rotting and she was able to “easily” pull open the window leading to the basement of her stepmother’s home. She entered a spare bedroom in the basement, took off her shoes and used the bathroom. Then she checked the basement for “anything out of sort.”

She said she then went up to the main floor and checked to make sure Carol Mitchell had food in the fridge, because she had been losing weight.

“It’s such a hard balance, someone’s freedom and when is that tipping point,” Nicole Mitchell said.

Nicole Mitchell then entered Carol Mitchell’s bedroom to check her phone. The room was pitch-black and she could hear her stepmother “breathing.” Then Carol Mitchell started stirring. Nicole Mitchell thought she would go back to bed, but Carol Mitchell got out of bed and came toward the door and ended up bumping into Nicole Mitchell and “grabbed for me.”

“I froze and she padded me a little bit and she said, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’” Nicole Mitchell said. “It sounded like her mad voice. I was afraid of a confrontation so I dashed into the hall and she chased me.”

Nicole Mitchell said she didn’t go into her room to harm her stepmother and she did not know she had a gun in the room.

“I regret what happened,” Nicole Mitchell said, adding that she regrets “that I didn’t do it the right way.”

“I don’t regret that I was worried,” she said.

— Briana Bierschbach

2:11 p.m. - The day of the incident, Nicole Mitchell said her gut told her something was wrong with her stepmother. She said she went to bed to “sleep on it” but woke up at 1 a.m. and decided to make the drive to Detroit Lakes from her home in Woodbury. Her attorney asked why she didn’t wait until the morning, and Nicole Mitchell said she didn’t want a “confrontation.”

“I didn’t want to hear something awful, I just couldn’t,” she said. “It would have spun her up.”

Nicole Mitchell said she was wearing flashlight gloves she wears for camping and had a backpack with two laptops, water, a pry bar, latex gloves and a flashlight that had a sock over the top “for awhile.”

She said she put the sock on the flashlight for her son, who sleeps in her room and is afraid of the dark. He needed a flashlight but it was too bright, so the sock was a “compromise” so he wouldn’t wake her in the night if he was scared. She said she brought latex gloves to potentially clean if the home was in disarray.

She parked a block away from Carol Mitchell’s house. “I was trying to avoid being seen,” she said. Carol Mitchell was paranoid and if neighbors saw her car in the driveway they could have told Carol and made her angry, Nicole Mitchell said.

— Briana Bierschbach

1:49 p.m. - After the court returned from a lunch break, Nicole Mitchell testified that Carol Mitchell had given her a laptop before the alleged break-in that her sons could use to play games. The laptop was one of two computers found in Nicole Mitchell’s backpack at the break-in.

The initial arrest warrant said Mitchell had attempted to take a laptop, but lawyers have agreed she didn’t steal a laptop she had when she was arrested. Nicole Mitchell said she did log into Carol Mitchell’s online health portal on the computer and saw in notes from a recent Alzheimer’s appointment. The notes said that Carol Mitchell went alone to the appointment and got lost on the way.

“I was pretty upset,” Nicole Mitchell said. “It made it clear no one was looking out for her.”

— Briana Bierschbach

12:46 p.m. - Nicole Mitchell has mostly faced the jurors to talk directly to them, using her hands to make gestures while telling long, sometimes rambling stories. Defense attorney Dane DeKrey has had to tell her to slow down and respond to his question specifically.

Jurors only turn away from Mitchell when they write notes or glance at DeKrey as he asks a brief question met with a long answer from Mitchell. One older gentleman sitting in the front of the jury box held his chin with his right hand and stared at Nicole Mitchell without breaking his gaze for long stretches of testimony.

— Kim Hyatt

12:25 p.m. - Before the lunch break, defense attorney Dane DeKrey accused the state of violating the Brady rule, which requires the state to disclose any evidence favorable to the defense. An investigator testified on Wednesday that there were no texts on Carol Mitchell’s phone exchanged with Nicole Mitchell.

DeKrey said the state did not disclose that Carol Mitchell allegedly deleted the texts exchanged with Nicole Mitchell a month before the break-in, when the two got into a fight over the interment date. There were 30 exhibits of a three-day text exchange that Nicole Mitchell read, getting emotional and red in the face.

DeKrey wants Judge Michael Fritz to make a note to the jury that Carol Mitchell deleted texts, or that law enforcement testimony about there being no texts between Carol and Nicole Mitchell is inaccurate. DeKrey said the texts are a “central focus of this case.”

“There should be some sort of punishment,” DeKrey said. The court took a break at noon for lunch and the attorneys will return to discuss the texts issue with Judge Fritz, who will make a ruling before the jury returns to hear more of Nicole Mitchell’s testimony.

— Kim Hyatt

11:56 a.m. - Nicole Mitchell described a situation in March 2024 when Carol Mitchell told her about an interment for her father on the anniversary of his death. The date didn’t work for Nicole Mitchell because it was on a Tuesday and she had work in the state Senate.

Nicole Mitchell read text messages she sent to Carol Mitchell discussing the date when her stepmother initially seemed open to finding a time but later said the funeral home wouldn’t let her change the date. Nicole Mitchell said that she asked the funeral home if a different date worked, which they confirmed, but Carol Mitchell said too many others would have to change their schedules.

“You planned a ceremony without his child and grandchildren,” Nicole Mitchell texted Carol Mitchell. Their conversation deteriorated and they discussed past issues dating back to when Nicole Mitchell was a child.

The interment was one month before the break-in at Carol Mitchell’s Detroit Lakes home. Defense attorneys haven’t asked Nicole Mitchell about the events of that night yet.

— Briana Bierschbach

11:36 a.m. - Nicole Mitchell said in 2023, in addition to her father dying, several other family members died, the legislative session was “the craziest session ever,” and she was often working into the early hours of the morning.

She was recovering from a major surgery and one of Nicole Mitchell’s foster children was being transitioned back to his mother and she was worried for his safety. “It wasn’t a good year,” Nicole Mitchell said, adding that the series of events increased her concern for her stepmother.

“She was on her own and there were a lot of things going on, and it was really hard not to see things that were kind of the worst case scenario happening to other people and not think that could happen to this person, too,” she said.

— Briana Bierschbach

11:22 a.m. - Testimony resumed around 11 a.m. with questioning from defense attorneys. Nicole Mitchell said she sought advice about what to do if Carol Mitchell’s disease progressed to the point where she was at risk of hurting herself. Nicole Mitchell said she had discussed with Carol Mitchell that she could stay with her if she ever needed to.

“I wanted her to have her autonomy but balance not having it go too far,” Nicole Mitchell said.

— Briana Bierschbach

10:55 a.m. - The jury watched attentively, without expression. The courtroom gallery was silent except for one moment when a friend of Carol Mitchell’s sitting in the front row became visibly upset.

— Kim Hyatt

10:48 a.m. - Nicole Mitchell said before her father died all of her correspondence with Carol Mitchell was “loving and cat memes” and after he died text messages from her stepmother started to become more paranoid.

The defense put several texts on the screen to show jurors they still had some pleasant exchanges. Nicole Mitchell became emotional looking at the messages. She read some of the texts out loud from June 2023 after Nicole Mitchell visited the house following her father’s death. The two talked about how much they enjoyed the visit and Carol Mitchell said she was proud of Nicole Mitchell. Nicole Mitchell said Carol Mitchell played a role in her life’s success.

Nicole Mitchell testified for 50 minutes before the court took a morning break in the 10 a.m. hour

— Briana Bierschbach

10:32 a.m. - Nicole Mitchell said that after her father died, Carol Mitchell was “cycling through people that she trusted” to help her with care. Nicole Mitchell said her stepmother could mask the progression of her disease well to others.

“She was starting to get lost. … I thought we needed to work with Carol to know her wishes while she was still having really good days so we weren’t doing anything down the road that weren’t her wishes,” Nicole Mitchell said, adding that she had a conversation about this with Pam Muxfeldt, Carol Mitchell’s niece.

Nicole Mitchell said Muxfeldt said she’s had experience with people struggling with the disease in the past and felt she dismissed her concerns. Muxfeldt testified on Tuesday that Nicole and Carol Mitchell’s relationship had deteriorated. Muxfeldt read a text message sent to her by Carol Mitchell expressing concern that Nicole was “greedy” and was going to come for money after Nicole Mitchell’s father died without a will.

Nicolle Mitchell said she thought her father had a will and she was “grateful” that Carol was taking steps to divide assets after he died. She said she would occasionally answer questions from Carol Mitchell but was otherwise not involved in that process.

— Briana Bierschbach

10:16 a.m. - Nicole Mitchell appeared nervous, often getting too close to the microphone on the witness stand.

She recalled an evening when there was a bad snowstorm and her father tried to drive from her home in Woodbury back to Detroit Lakes but had to turn around. He was worried about her stepmother, Nicole Mitchell said, and left first thing the next morning.

“If Dad was worried and was showing it, it was usually a sign it was pretty bad,” she said. Nicole Mitchell said other members of her family have also struggled with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

— Briana Bierschbach

10:12 a.m. - Nicolle Mitchell said her relationship with Carol Mitchell was “absolutely” affected by her stepmother’s diagnosis with Alzhemier’s disease. Before her diagnosis, Nicole Mitchell said her stepmother was “always in my life” and was a mother figure to her. She would go on camping trips with Carol Mitchell and her late father. She described her stepmother as “artistic” and someone who loved animals.

Nicole Mitchell said she first noticed signs of Alzheimer’s in Carol Mitchell in 2021. She was confused and forgot a conversation about her husband leaving the house to go to the grocery store. Nicole Mitchell said she mentioned this to her late father, who said he could handle the situation. Nicole Mitchell said her stepmother was formally diagnosed with the disease in 2022.

— Briana Bierschbach

9:53 a.m. - Before this case, Nicole Mitchell said she had no experience with criminal law. She said that she took the “touchy-feelys” courses such as family and juvenile law in law school, and that her area of work is in children’s and veterans issues. She said her father and stepmother started dating when she was 4 and married when she was 8 so she has known Carol Mitchell for 46 years.

— Abby Simons

9:46 a.m. - Nicole Mitchell took the stand, initially introducing herself and discussing her family, including her two sons. She said she is a single parent who does foster care, both full time and respite. She described her work as a state senator, and said before that she was a meteorologist and served in the Minnesota National Guard. Since 2019 to last November, she was a commander in the National Guard. She retired because she was eligible but also because of her burglary case. She also has a law degree.

— Abby Simons