Last week’s big stories tended to drown out another big story that should not go unnoticed. For the third time in eight months, a Baltimore police officer who had been tried in the death of Freddie Gray was acquitted of all charges. (A fourth policeman’s case ended last December in a hung jury, with one juror holding out for conviction.) Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn J. Mosby is now 0-4 on Freddie Gray prosecutions, with three more to go, including a scheduled retrial of the case that ended in a hung jury.
If Mosby were any ordinary prosecutor, she might be taking some time now to consider her options. She has lost three bench trials and very nearly lost the one jury proceeding that ended in a mistrial. There is no new evidence or theory to be introduced in any future tribunal, and the judge in these recent cases has made it clear that he believes the state has failed to make the case to support its charges.
But Mosby is no ordinary prosecutor. Readers will recall that when riots broke out in Baltimore last year, after Freddie Gray’s death, Mosby indicted the six police officers involved in Gray’s arrest with unprecedented speed. At the time, there had been no official investigation of Gray’s death while in police custody; there was even lingering uncertainty about the cause of death. But in her statement, Mosby made it clear that her decision to indict was essentially a political decision designed to end the rioting: “I heard your call for ‘no justice, no peace,’ ” she declared at a press conference, and “your peace is sincerely needed as I move to deliver justice on behalf of” Freddie Gray.
It was a smart move—politically. Overnight, Mosby became a media sensation (“Marilyn Mosby’s Amazing Press Conference,” the Washington Post), and her glamorized image appeared in such unlikely venues as Vogue. The rioting and widespread vandalism in Baltimore did end with the arrest and indictment of the police officers, but at a certain cost. For not only did Mosby rush to judgment in the cases, she committed a common error of ambitious prosecutors: overkill. The circumstances of the death of Gray, who suffered spinal injuries while being transported in a police van, were (and remain) ambiguous. But Mosby charged the cops with a wide variety and abundance of charges—from reckless endangerment to misconduct in office, from involuntary manslaughter to “depraved-heart” murder—clearly designed to convict them by any means necessary.
Now, one year later, it is clear that, while Mosby may have correctly read the mood of Baltimore’s rioters, she clearly misconstrued the purpose of law. Indeed, the Baltimore trial judge, the Hon. Barry G. Williams, has grown increasingly exasperated with each succeeding case, explaining to prosecutors that the evidence consistently fails to support their charges.
The Scrapbook is more than willing to stipulate that Freddie Gray may have been a victim of injustice: Police misconduct is not a fantasy, and too often, prosecutors join with cops to squash cases. But one kind of outrage doesn’t justify another. Marilyn J. Mosby’s unseemly haste and vindictive action has not only been rebuked in the courts of law, but shines an unflattering light on the power of unprincipled prosecutors to do harm.
