Gov. Martin O?Malley has requested a “formal opinion” from the Attorney General over whether Baltimore prosecutors should have first crack at determining the viability of police charges.
O?Malley is taking issue with what he calls an unusual practice of Baltimore prosecutors, instead of a court commissioner, initially reviewing police statements of probable cause at the Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Facility and determining whether the cases are legally sufficient to proceed. The result, O?Malley says, is a public perception that officers never had ample probable cause when making an arrest.
“This issue is of great concern to me,” O?Malley wrote to Attorney General Douglas Gansler. “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.? ”
In 2006, officers arrested 19,152 adults who were later released from Central Booking without charges. There were 26,877 such cases in 2005.
The Maryland National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union have sued the police department over the arrests.
City lawyers argue that the decision of Baltimore City State?s Attorney Patricia Jessamy?s lawyers not to prosecute certain crimes does not mean those arrests were unlawful.
Jessamy spokeswoman Margaret Burns described O?Malley as inconsistent ? because he supported the current practice during his tenure as Baltimore mayor.
“The creation of the charging division was embraced, supported and expanded under the O?Malley administration,” Burns said.
O?Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese said the governor simply wants a “more accountable and more efficient” criminal justice system.
“Gov. O?Malley now has control of Central Booking and has long been concerned with how it?s operating,” Abbruzzese said.
If the system were altered to mirror surrounding counties “you could have a court commissioner rule on probable cause and then the state?s attorney make their decision to prosecute shortly thereafter,” he said.
Gansler?s spokeswoman, Raquel Guillory, said it could take “weeks to months” for the office to issue an opinion.
