Pat Jessamy’s rejection of the Abell Foundation’s report on the city’s jury problems exposes her self-defeating “leadership” style in a way that should frighten every city taxpayer.
The study idea came from Jessamy’s own hardworking deputy prosecutors. The report’s mission was to see whether Baltimore juries behave differently from those in surrounding counties.
Yes, it turns out, they do. And the report cites dramatic statistics on how and why.
Yet even before the study’s completion, Jessamy said she wanted it shelved. Why would a chief prosecutor want to suppress information that could aid her fight against violence?
The report is an earnest attempt to help Jessamy’s prosecutors prevail against the city’s criminals — four of whom killed my husband.
When Zach’s prosecutors explained why they wanted to cut a plea deal with the attackers, they explicitly told me the harsh realities of Baltimore City jurors.
It’s no secret that Baltimore City juries are notoriously biased against prosecutors and cops. The notion is that the mostly black jury pool distrusts the mostly nonblack justice system, and freeing black defendants is their way of settling old scores. The Abell report boldly tries to separate myth from reality.
Though the study avoids attributing the bias to racial issues — preferring the language of cultural inequities that afflict our mostly black city — it nevertheless reveals disturbing truths that no authority can ignore. To wit: Jessamy’s prosecutors are 30 times less likely to convict criminals of their worst offenses than prosecutors in nearby counties.
As part of our reform efforts, my friends and I have contacted dozens of people over the past year in trying to draft legislation we call “Zach’s Law.” We’ve talked with folks like victims’ rights icon Roberta Roper, Rep. Elijah Cummings, state Sen. Brian Frosh, former Rep. Kweisi Mfume, local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People head Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, city Circuit Judge John Glynn, City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, local Guardian Angels commander Marcus Dent — and many, many more.
We even had a cordial 90-minute talk with Pat Jessamy on Feb. 12. We asked if we could help on any of her crime-fighting efforts. Of specific interest was city juries. To our surprise, Jessamy said she didn’t believe jury bias even existed here. She rejected our jury ideas on first blush.
We left her office thinking we had formed an alliance. We were wrong. In retrospect, that meeting paints a clear picture of Pat Jessamy as an ostrich with her head in the sand.
We have seen further evidence of this when State’s Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Margaret Burns contradicted the accepted facts in the case against Zach’s killers — facts agreed upon by Jessamy herself, facts I rely upon in presenting my “credentials” as an emerging activist, facts that are all provably true. Despite my best protest efforts, Burns’ deceits remain unretracted by her or Jessamy.
Who are these people? Don’t they work for us? Aren’t they supposed to help victims?
For a more vivid take on the city’s jury problems, consider this: At a pretrial hearing last fall, a TV crew was interviewing me outside the courthouse when a car full of black youths sped by and shouted: “Free my [N-word]!”
I found the incident shocking but learned quickly that it wasn’t an uncommon mind-set. It was an issue Cheatham knew too well. I met Cheatham for lunch before the trial. Cheatham offered to sit with me in the courtroom as jurors were chosen — to “send a signal,” he said. He wanted to make it clear to the mostly black pool of city jurors that racial issues should not be a factor this time. It would not be “business as usual.”
Doc kept his promise and sat with me on that awful day. But it turned out the plea negotiations were already well under way. Just another day in Pat Jessamy’s Baltimore.
With leadership like Jessamy’s, is it any wonder why famed Baltimore filmmaker David Simon has found it so easy to call our city “Bodymore, Murdaland”?
Anna Sowers is an activist with the Web site zachsowers.com. Her husband, Zach, was beaten into a coma in 2007 during a random street robbery and died this year shortly after the men who did it pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Anna is advocating for a law to allow murder charges against attackers who put victims into a persistent vegetative state for more than four weeks.
