Sen. Nicole Mitchell took the stand in her own defense in her felony burglary trial Thursday, July 17, depicting herself as a concerned stepdaughter who took steps to conduct a welfare check on her stepmother without being seen.
The Woodbury Democrat admitted to lying to the police about her intentions — she told them she went to her stepmother’s Detroit Lakes home to get a few of her father’s things — but only to refrain from exacerbating her stepmother’s Alzheimer’s-related paranoia, including about being put in a facility against her will, Mitchell said during nearly an entire day of testimony.
“I created this entire situation, so the only person I have to blame here is myself,” Mitchell acknowledged.
Mitchell is hoping that a mix of just enough contrition and explanation for her erratic behavior will spur empathy from jurors, who may have experience with family upheaval that can result from age and infirmity, and especially dementia.
She became emotional several times when she recalled the happier times with her late father and stepmother Carol Mitchell — before her father’s death, after which she said Carol’s Alzheimer’s worsened.
Nicole Mitchell on Thursday read aloud text messages with Carol about one month prior to the break-in. The pair argued about interring the ashes of Nicole Mitchell’s father. (Contrary to a widely reported detail that came from police, Mitchell knew the ashes were already interred when she showed up at Carol’s house, so she could not have made an effort to purloin them. In addition, Carol had already mailed Nicole Mitchell some of the ashes.)
During the text exchanges, Carol accused Nicole of not loving her father and disdaining her.
Nicole Mitchell said after that she didn’t contact Carol anymore because she needed a break from the hostility, which can be a symptom of Alzheimer’s.
In the days leading up to Nicole Mitchell’s April 22, 2024, arrest in Carol’s Detroit Lakes home, Mitchell accessed her stepmother’s medical records without Carol’s permission.
The records showed, Nicole Mitchell said, that Carol had gotten lost on her way to her April 17, 2024, Alzheimer’s appointment, and was struggling with depression and drinking more frequently. She attended the appointment alone. Nicole Mitchell said that her interactions with her stepmother were worsening, citing Carol’s dementia-induced paranoia even as Nicole tried to help her.
She testified that she feared if she merely called instead of showing up in person, Carol would lie about her well-being. What she read in her stepmother’s medical records catalyzed her decision to conduct a welfare check in person, she said.
“I was worried, in general, and I decided to check and see how things were myself,” Mitchell testified.
Nicole Mitchell said she left her home on April 22, 2024, around 1 a.m., leaving her two young sons in her stepfather’s care, and arrived at Carol’s home around 4:30 a.m.
She had a pair of special “flashlight gloves,” as well as a flashlight with a sock on it, which she said was not a burglar’s tool but instead a favorite calming nightlight for her young autistic son. She also said she brought a prybar to the house.
Nicole Mitchell had been a frequent visitor of Carol’s, so Nicole Mitchell testified that she parked far away from the house so the neighbors wouldn’t recognize her car and dressed all in black to avoid being spotted.
She didn’t want the neighbors to see she was there, she said, because they would inform Carol that they saw her, which would cause Carol to be paranoid about Nicole Mitchell’s intentions. Carol testified during the trial Tuesday that she believed Nicole Mitchell wanted her money and even wanted to end her life.
Nicole Mitchell said she had a key to Carol’s because she and her kids would frequently stay over.
She saw a chair pushed up against the door and a bar laid up at an angle to the door knob, inhibiting easy opening. Nicole Mitchell said she could have tried to force her way in, but she didn’t want to make noise and wake Carol up.
She said she entered the home through a rotted, easily opened egress window. She testified that she took off her shoes when she entered to avoid tracking dirt into the home.
She looked in the basement freezer and then made her way upstairs to the kitchen to see if Carol had food in the house. Nicole Mitchell said she believed Carol had lost weight, so she wanted to make sure she had enough food.
She said she wanted to ensure Carol Mitchell’s phone was working. She said Carol wasn’t technology-savvy and had been deleting messages and contacts because of her paranoia, so she wanted to see if Carol had inadvertently turned on the phone’s “do not disturb” function or deleted her family members’ phone numbers.
Nicole Mitchell said she went to Carol’s bedroom, where she believed Carol kept her phone at night, and opened the door a crack. Carol stirred. Nicole Mitchell, standing near the door, said she watched her stepmother get out of bed, walk up to her and say, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Nicole Mitchell said she was afraid of a confrontation, so she “dashed” into the hall. Carol chased her. Unlike Carol’s telling of the incident, Nicole Mitchell said she was not crawling on the floor. Carol Mitchell earlier in the week misremembered several aspects of the break-in, including that police had “pulled” Nicole Mitchell out of the basement window to arrest her. She also struggled with dates and names.
The first-term senator said she was afraid and didn’t want to escalate the situation, so she ran to the basement to wait and see how her stepmother responded. She heard Carol say that she had a knife. Nicole Mitchell said she panicked and tried to escape through a basement window, shoving her backpack near the window, but she realized she couldn’t get out. She said she heard her stepmother call the police.
She said she believed her stepmother was merely angry at her. She was initially relieved that police would arrive and deescalate the situation and resolve the family dispute.
Nicole Mitchell testified that she was not there to steal anything in the house.
But this contradicted what she told police numerous times during her arrest — that she was there to get a few of her late father’s belongings.
This was a lie, Nicole Mitchell testified.
“Why did you tell the police four times that that’s why you were there?” Mitchell’s attorney Dane DeKrey asked his client on direct examination.
Mitchell said she didn’t want to heighten Carol’s fear of being put in memory care.
“If I would have told her I was trying to do a welfare check … she would have assumed I was trying to stick her in a nursing home, which was a real fear she had. So in that moment, and having just seen all the stuff of dad’s in the basement, including a couple of things that she promised me but never gotten to me, what came to my mind was just to say I was coming to get a couple things of dad’s,” Mitchell said.
She said she wasn’t thinking rationally at the moment and wished she had behaved differently, but she doesn’t regret trying to check in and help her family member.
“You just admitted to lying on video,” DeKrey told Nicole Mitchell on the stand. “And so the obvious question is, if you lied to the police four times on the night of this incident, how is the jury supposed to believe that you are not lying now?”
“Sometimes to protect family members, you have to lie,” Nicole Mitchell said.
Police never searched Mitchell’s car and did not find any evidence of theft.
Becker County Attorney Brian McDonald listens to testimony of Minnesota Sen. Nicole Mitchell during her trial on Wednesday, July 17, 2025, at Becker County District Court in Detroit Lakes. Sen. Mitchell is accused of burglarizing her stepmother Carol Mitchell’s house in Detroit Lakes in April 2024. (Photo by Anna Paige/Fargo Forum pool photo) On cross examination, Becker County Attorney Brian McDonald tried to poke holes in Mitchell’s story. She remained composed and consistent.
McDonald noted that Nicole Mitchell was with police for 37 minutes outside of the presence of Carol and not once did she tell police that she was there out of concern for her stepmother.
“The problem with that story is that you were with the officers much longer outside of her presence than (in) her presence, right? And you continue the story,” McDonald said.
Nicole Mitchell said that she didn’t tell officers why she was there because she noticed that the cops were relaying information from her back to Carol; she said she still believed that if she could keep Carol’s paranoia at bay — about putting Carol in a home, or stealing her money or otherwise harming her — Carol might not press charges.
McDonald noted that in her remarks to police, Nicole Mitchell intertwined truths with what she now asserts were lies, like when she told officers that she was a military commander and “there’s just a couple of my dad’s things I came to get” in the same sentence. (Mitchell retired as an officer in the Air National Guard at the end of 2024.)
In one of his final questions on cross examination, McDonald asked Nicole Mitchell what her late father would have thought of her actions.
“I think he would be very sad by this whole situation, and that he would support me because he loved Carol,” Mitchell said. “Even if I did it the wrong way, he would have wanted me to do my best to take care of her.”
On Friday, the defense will likely call a few more witnesses before closing statements.
If convicted of burglary, Mitchell faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. If found guilty of possession of burglary tools she faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison.
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