Myon Burrell was arrested on probable cause of a drug offense

Myon Burrell, who was sentenced to life in prison as a teenager and released 18 years later after reporting uncovered deficiencies in the murder case that sent him there, was charged Thursday in Hennepin County with probable cause of a controlled substance violation/ Narcotics arrest jail records.

Details about what led to the arrest were not available Thursday evening, and Burrell had not been charged.

Burrell, now 38, was just 16 when he was arrested in connection with the fatal 2002 shooting 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards in Minneapolis. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

He spent nearly two decades there before Associated Press reports revealed flaws in the police investigation and prosecutors’ case against him. In 2020, Burrell’s sentence was commuted to 20 years and he was released from prison to serve the remaining two years on supervised release.

Last year, Burrell was arrested after a traffic stop in Robbinsdale and charged with fifth-degree drug possession and illegal weapons possession. A judge in Hennepin County ruled last week that police stop and search a vehicle Burrell was driving was justified.

Burrell’s attorneys had argued there was no probable cause to stop Burrell or search his vehicle “based on nothing more than an imaginary cloud of smoke allegedly coming from inside the vehicle.” They cited a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling that said the smell of marijuana alone did not justify a search.

Judge Peter Cahill wrote in an order that the search was valid, citing moving violations seen in the patrol car footage and an officer’s “clearly visible green foliage debris” as valid reasons for searching the vehicle for a possible DWI .