The American Civil Liberties Union blasted the efforts of Gov. Martin O?Malley to exclude prosecutors from reviewing arrests.
“Our primary concern is the [city] State?s Attorney has helped identify a significant problem with arrests,” said David Rocah, a lawyer for the ACLU who is suing the city along with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on behalf of several residents who claim they were illegally arrested.
“If their role is eliminated, the problem won?t be solved, but the evidence of the problem will be buried,” he said.
In May, O?Malley asked Attorney General Doug Gansler to review the legality of prosecutors reviewing an arrest before the detainee appears before a court commissioner.
In a letter to Gansler, O?Malley said thousands of people released without charges created a public perception that officers did not have ample probable cause when making an arrest.
“This issue is of great concern to me,” O?Malley wrote. “Public confidence in the criminal justice system is undermined when a person is arrested and then released with no determination of probable cause … which is spun as a supposed ?false arrest.? ”
But Margaret Burns, spokeswoman for city State?s Attorney Patricia Jessamy, said her office unburdens a previously overwhelmed system.
“We would be going back to the dark ages,” she said, if city prosecutors were removed from the process. “The system would be overloaded with a backlog of cases; it would break down.”
Gansler spokeswoman Raquel Guillory acknowledged receiving of the letter form the ACLU, but declined to comment.
Examiner Staff Writer Luke Broadwater contributed to this story.
