Marilyn Mosby has become "Exhibit A" of the dangerousness of politically motivated prosecutions which are not based on facts, but instead desire to placate a crowd and attempt to elevate a political profile. In addition, she has proven in her statements dismissing the charges that she is utterly unqualified to be the State's Attorney for Baltimore, Maryland.
On July 18, 2016, in Baltimore, Maryland, for the third time an officer charged by Mosby in connection with the death of Freddie Gray was found not guilty. A fourth trial ended with a hung jury. On Wednesday, July 27, Mosby announced she was dropping all remaining charges against three Baltimore police officers still facing trial accused in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray
.
Mosby, newly elected as Baltimore State's Attorney with little legal experience, forced a prosecution of officers that was clearly
politically motivated
. She announced the charges on the steps of Baltimore's War Memorial Building before a cheering crowd of protesters, following 19 days of disturbances in Baltimore. Despite having only received the police investigative report the day before, and having as it is now clear developed no new facts justifying charges in her own "independent investigation," Mosby ordered the six officers be arrested and booked into custody.
For her actions, Mosby was lionized by parts of the media, replete with glamour profiles in magazines such as Vogue. There was little pushback from the August editorial boards in this country about a "rush to justice;" instead, Mosby was portrayed as the prosecutor who was going to ensure "justice" was done.
It is abundantly clear that "injustice" was done in bringing these prosecutions. In announcing his acquittal of Lieutenant Brian Rice on July 18,
Judge Barry G. Williams
outlined how the prosecution failed to prove the charges they brought. He called out the prosecution for asking the court to rely on "
presumptions or assumptions
"
- something it cannot do," and reminded all that the court "cannot be swayed by sympathy, prejudice or public opinion."
Before this most recent acquittal, a Baltimore Sun columnist referred to Judge Williams and a prior acquittal as "a lesson in evidence and criminal liability he gave the state." It was a lesson absorbed by the Baltimore Sun newspaper Editorial Board, which after that acquittal wrote, "But Ms. Mosby's job is not to mount prosecutions to placate the public. It is to follow the evidence" and stated continuing to pursue a case against the other officers such as Brian Rice was no longer reasonable.
Yet Mosby
persisted, bringing Rice to trial. When the "not guilty" verdict was announced in Rice's case, everybody was in court: Judge, prosecutors, defendant-- but not Mosby. In a cowardly move, she did not show up to hear the verdict for a case she insisted be brought to trial.
Mosby followed this display of cowardice by dismissing the charges in a vitriolic news conference that highlighted her lack of professionalism, judgment and integrity. She lashed out at the criminal justice system, blaming her failure to get any convictions before a jury and a Judge in four separate trials was because of a stacked criminal justice system.
As she put it,
because of the criminal justice system "we could try this case 100 times and cases just like it and we would still end up with the same result." No, Ms. Mosby, the reason you did not get any convictions is because the evidence did not support a conviction. Period.
The lesson to be learned from Baltimore is the danger of taking decisions to file prosecutions in police use of force cases from seasoned prosecutors and giving them to political appointees, whether they be new and inexperienced prosecutors seeking political laurels like Marilyn Mosby or "independent prosecutors" whose sole mission is to investigate police use of force.
In either case, good judgment of seasoned prosecutors falls victim to the temptation of fame, or the desire to justify one's existence by filing charges where the evidence simply doesn't support those charges.
William Nifong
became the infamous and now disbarred District Attorney for his politically motivated attempt to prosecute Duke lacrosse players. Marilyn Mosby's decision making in this case before, during, and after the trials make Nifong look like a minor leaguer.
