ALGONA — A Kossuth County magistrate has stepped down from a case involving a Minnesota teenager charged with killing two convenience store clerks in northern Iowa.

Magistrate Mark Laddusaw recused himself, citing a potential conflict of interest involving a client. Laddusaw, a lawyer who works part time at an Algona law firm, declined to discuss the nature of the conflict.

Online court records show Laddusaw recused himself in an order filed Dec. 1.

Seventeen-year-old Michael Swanson, of St. Louis Park, Minn., is charged with first-degree murder and first-degree robbery in both Kossuth and Humboldt counties in the Nov. 15 slayings of two women in Algona and Humboldt. He will be tried as an adult.

Swanson remains in the Kossuth County jail on $1 million bond.