The other shoe dropped: prosecutors dropped all remaining charges against three Baltimore police officers accused in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, following the acquittals of three other officers by Circuit Judge Barry G. Williams. He was expected to preside over the remaining trials, and, as the Bible says, the writing was on the wall.
Make no mistake: this result was completely and entirely the result of the incompetent, unethical conduct of State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, who vaingloriously announced charges against the officers in the immediate wake of rioting in Baltimore, following the dictates of a mob. She did this without sufficient investigation, evidence or, despite the ethical requirements of her office, probable cause. She had the city of Baltimore agree to a large damages settlement for Gray’s family before any of the officers were tried, prejudicing their cases. She spent millions on the prosecutions, and shattered the lives of all six officers, and yet never made a case that justified any of it.
There are more unethical things that a prosecutor can do, and they certainly do them. Some prosecute individuals they know are innocent, which is a bit worse than prosecuting someone who might be guilty because a mob wants blood. Those unethical prosecutors, however, try to cover their tracks. Not Mosby: she’s proud of being unethical, because its the kind of unethical conduct that African-American activists think promotes justice. Justice is when someone pays with their life or liberty if an African American dies, regardless of law or evidence. That’s the theory, anyway.
We know Mosby is proud, because of the astounding press conference we just heard her give following the announcement. She accepted no responsibility for the collapse of the cases, although it was entirely her fault. Mosby defended her indefensible decision to bring the charges against the officers, saying that “as a mother,” the decision to drop them was “agonizing.”
You read that right: she played the ever-popular mother card. Being a mother has absolutely nothing to do with her job as a prosecutor. If, as her comments suggest, her status as a mother had anything to do with her decision to charge the officers despite insufficient evidence, she is as unprofessional as she is conflicted. She’s not in her position to identify with Freddie Gray’s mother, and if she did, she should have withdrawn. Is she aware that the six officers she sacrificed to mob extortion—Prosecute or we burn down the city!—also have mothers? I guess not.
She continued [my involuntary reactions to this offal are in bold]:
“After much thought and prayer [ And the God card, employing the time-tested tactic of scoundrels to implicate the deity in their personal misconduct, as if God wanted her to bring premature charges. Beneath contempt.], it has become clear that without being able to work with an independent investigatory agency from the very start [ What was stopping her?] , without having a say in the election of whether cases proceed in front of a judge or jury [Yes, it’s called “the rights of the accused”..], without communal oversight of police in this community [But we saw the “community oversight”: members of the community were harassing and threatening officers as they tried to arrest Gray, which the judge found to be one reason he was put in the truck without being belted in] without substantive reforms to the current criminal justice system [ You mean like allowing cops to be convicted of crimes without evidence if the “community” is sufficiently violent?], we could try this case 100 times and cases just like it and we would still end up with the same result.”
This is just a lie, designed to duck accountability and to inflame the public. The reason she “could try this case 100 times and cases just like it and we would still end up with the same result” is because she brought charges without sufficient evidence, and if she is right ( I doubt it, for bad cases do get convictions), then the criminal justice system needs no reform other than to purge itself of prosecutors like Mosby.
Then Mosby went on to condemn the actions and testimony of some officers involved in Gray’s arrest and the police department’s investigation of the incident, saying that there was “consistent bias” at “every stage.” This is a firing offense for her. Her case collapsed, and she is still impugning officers in public without evidence.
The American Bar Association ethics guidelines for prosecutors states ..
A prosecutor should not make or authorize the making of an extrajudicial statement that a reasonable person would expect to be disseminated by means of public communication if the prosecutor knows or reasonably should know that it will have a substantial likelihood of prejudicing a criminal proceeding.
Her statement prejudiced all future criminal proceedings in Baltimore involving police, and that was exactly what she intended to do.
Marilyn J. Mosby revealed herself as a rogue prosecutor, untrustworthy, dishonest, reckless and no longer dedicated to her duty as a law enforcement official, but unethically using her position to advance a political and social agenda.
Ethics Alarms 
Marilyn Mosby, similarly BLM Movement “members”, are blatant political hacks and unapologetic racists. I think she’s now earned a place in the Hillary Clinton cabinet, maybe as the United States Attorney General; what could go wrong?
Wow…I guess I should of had kids. Who has such a lack of a heart to admonish a mother just trying to protect her children?
I don’t think ever Hillary is likely to appoint Mosby as Attorney General. Mosby besides being a racist and totally unethical is just plain dumb. She probably wind up as an administrator at some third rate law school.
This may also border under the heading of “something that will help Donald Trump get elected” ??
Yes.
The substance of the case aside, what I notice is the intensity of her anger. I think it is worthwhile to pay attention to it. It is this anger that terrifies whites down to their bootsies and renders them impotent. I don’t think that whites can understand this sentiment. I mean, what would they compare it to in their own experience? It is so plainly visible in her brow. It had to be that sort of anger behind the Haitian uprising years back. It is not rational. It rises up out of the core. I cannot say it is ‘racist’ but it does seem to me to be *racial*.
I also notice that — I am embarrassed to say this — she talks like a street rapper. This shocks me. I doubted her grip on legal language and as well her grasp of English. She does not speak the language that I know, and I do not know how to speak her language, but some part of what she is saying is bound up in her language, like in rap poetry. To understand her sentiments, you have to speak her language (don’t know if that makes sense).
But that level of anger is bad medicine. It does not bode well. And it appears to be common.
There’s nothing terrifying about it. It’s not power, it’s incompetence. It doesn’t make her stronger. I makes her weaker. She forfeits credibility and trust.
Jack, I take your assessment of her prosecution decision to be correct. I listened to her long ramble — a very angry ramble with lots of yeas from the listening crowd — and I’d have no idea how to assess it.
But what interests me more, and what I really think is more important and more necessary to be understood, is the rage that is rising up in African Americans now.
If, as most say here, it is an anger founded on false premises, then it must be looked at as a form of manipulation. That is, staged anger which has as its end the gaining of some concessions from surrounding culture; historical payback? Or is it more or less simply an expression of anger at the System (which means the white system) for having put black people in this position. Some months back you wrote some blog posts which dealt on the incapacity on-average inability of black society to come up to par. What this means is a position of inferiority and incompetence vis-a-vis the dominant system. If this is so, I’d imagine that this creates anger and resentment, and therefor a lashing out.
But if there is justification for black rage — and in my view I cannot exclude this — then there is some reckoning that will be required. Millions and millions of black Americans feel this to be the case.
Therefor, when I watched the video I paid more attention to the entire performance (in a manner of speaking), and I noticed that she was speaking to the Black American nation who, as with her immediate audience, would too have been saying ‘Yes!’ ‘That’s right!’ ‘That’s how it is!’
What also interests me is how people’s sentiments — in this case deep anger — will inflect their reasoning, indeed pervert it. Under the force of rage one does not and cannot act rationally.
And I think I spoke reasonably and truly when I said that white America is terrified of black rage and anger. This I have observed many many times (in the Bay Area of California). I am also familiar with a smouldering rage among blacks in Venezuela and to a lesser extent in Colombia. It is, as I say, ‘a real thing’. When dealing with sentiments that rise up out of the body one has to be aware of this.
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Most revered and honored Zoltar. We are forced at times to speak in generalities even as we recognize that to do so is problematic. Even this statement is a generalization! Generalizations are useful to us as long as we don’t let them trap us.
Alizia Tyler said, “The substance of the case aside, what I notice is the intensity of her anger. I think it is worthwhile to pay attention to it. It is this anger that terrifies whites down to their bootsies and renders them impotent. I don’t think that whites can understand this sentiment. I mean, what would they compare it to in their own experience?”
Way, Way, WAY too many blanket assumptions in that.
You should be talking about your experiences, your feelings, your understandings not making blanket assumptions about the experiences, feelings or understandings of whites in general, you’re simply not “qualified” to assert such generalizations.
Alizia Tyler said, “But that level of anger is bad medicine. It does not bode well. And it appears to be common.”
That’s something you and I can agree on; so, there will be no lightening bolts launched from the throne of Zeus about those points.
Do you suppose the Maryland State Bar would entertain an ethics complaint? Then again, if Maryland’s Bar is anything like Virginia’s, they wouldn’t take any action against a prosecutor. If the Duke Lacrosse prosecutor had been in Virginia, he’d still be a prosecutor, while the Bar was “investigating” his case. The Bar’s investigation of Paul Ebert’s alleged misconduct (which was found to exist by a federal judge) is going into at least its fifth year or so.
They have to investigate every complaint. No, I doubt they will do anything.
They may have to investigate, but they sure don’t seem to be obligated to do it promptly. The last prosecutor (she was the Commonwealth’s Attorney in York County) they actually sanctioned lost the next election, but I hear that she’s now working in the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office.
There is already a Maryland state bar complaint pending, no?
jvb
Yes. One we know about. I bet there are several.
This is my intuitional assessment:
No one will touch her. No one will investigate her. And I doubt she will be reprimanded.
(Perhaps I am wrong.)
Yet it seems to me that her topic, the one she is so upset about (I do not know what it is), is one that cannot be touched. And this indicates some part of white America’s relationship to black America. Who would undertake it? And if they got her fired, what then? To do so is to invite more of the same intense and almost uncontrolled rage from the black community.
It seems to me that this rage is a powerful tool. I don’t mean it is the best tool but it is one that gets results.
End of Intuitional Assessment.
There is no need to dance around and allude to the fact that some African-Americans are mad as hell and their pent up rage is at a flash point. There is absolutely no question about it, and you describe the warning signs eloquently. However, I would not be so sure White America is as scared, terrified, and as timid as you think. People seem to forget that White America has had to fight for what they have also. This is not their first rodeo. Nothing was handed to them on a silver platter either, though it times certain people may think so. White America has done very well for themselves, wish to continue to do so, and no other place to go or new worlds to discover either. I see no flag of surrender waving from their camp, and I personally feel 100% sure law and order will be maintained at any cost. I think what you are interpreting as weakness is actually called “cooler heads,” and they often do as they do – Prevail.
While I will certainly hold her accountable for the failures of the prosecution, I do not believe she had anything to do with the settlement that the Gray family received.
The approval of the settlement would rest with the Baltimore City Board of Estimates, chiefly the Mayor, City Council President, and their appointees. Mrs. Mosby is not a member.
You might be right; there’s no way to find out. I would assume the decision would have to involve her, because it does throw the officers under the bus.
“Marilyn J. Mosby revealed herself as a rogue prosecutor, untrustworthy, dishonest, reckless and no longer dedicated to her duty as a law enforcement official, but unethically using her position to advance a political and social agenda.”
But, she didn’t make it to the stage at THIS year’s Democrat convention.
So, maybe in 2020…
When I read this sentence, I literally curled into the fetal position, begging for my safe space. Triggered! 🙂
In the late 80’s and early 90’s my brother-in-law was a police officer in southern California. Riverside County to be specific. He would often speak about taking arrestees that they did not like, or who gave them grief, on “a ride”. They would not belt them in to car or van, and with handcuffs and sometimes other restraints were unable to brace themselves, so the driver would purposely brake hard and turn hard to toss the individual about the vehicle. It was considered funny and “officer applied (street) justice” they would laugh at goose eggs on heads, cuts and contusions. It could always be blamed on a prisoner resisting arrest. And cops protected one another. They would also often “take down” a frustrating arrestee with extra force smacking their heads on sidewalks or making them lie on baking hot pavement. It definitely was not always racial, they did it to anyone that annoyed, frustrated or angered them. And they did it with relative impunity, after all, the only “victims” were “bad guys” and they deserve it – at least that was (and to this day seems to still be) the reasoning behind it.
As soon as I heard about what happened to Freddie Gray, I immediately remembered my BIL’s stories of his time on the force and taking people “for rides”. I thought to myself, this time it just went a little too far. Instead of a broken nose, this guy’s neck was broken and he died. Normally it didn’t go that far and any excesses were easily explained by force needed to overcome resistance, etc.
We need body cameras on all cops, and cameras in police cars and vans to record what really happens. Cops are not saints or demons, they are human and given to great acts of goodness and great acts of evil. Their point of view can be skewed or jaded and they are vulnerable to the frustrations that the job entails, especially when they see criminals walk free so often. They see the worst that humanity can show day to day and I believe it eats away at their own humanity in some ways.
Except they couldn’t prove that Gray had a “rough ride.”
Exactly what officers have relied on for decades in order to escape culpability for their actions. No witnesses, bad witnesses, police witnesses…a cops word against a criminals…”they resisted”, “they did not comply”, “they ran from us”. It’s pretty tough to sort out the legitimate from the bogus and they count on that – and the protection they get from within their ranks. Hell, for the most part they police themselves. Prosecutors would be reluctant to prosecute cops that get rough with “bad guys”. And no one (but the family and friends of the victim) seem to really care if these people get punishment at the hands of cops before they ever even are booked, much less convicted and sentenced. It looks bad for politicians at election time if they aren’t tough on crime and support law enforcement. A lot of factors contribute to the lack of accountability and if not facilitate – at least make it much easier for a cop to get away with these actions.
If you think about it with empathy, you can understand the fear, the anger and the frustration of people living in these neighborhoods. You can understand the rage boiling from victims that are profiled, not believed, dismissed or blamed for their mistreatment. You can also understand the frustration and anger of law enforcement, who see criminals walk free every day to re-offend. Body cameras on police and inside police vehicles will help,
What I do know is Mosby is right in pointing out that unless there are changes in the system, things like this will continue to happen and prosecuting officers for committing these acts of violence will be nearly impossible. We need to quit allowing Internal Affairs to handle officer discipline, we need to have severe penalties for officers that witness abuse of power but keep quiet or lie in order to protect fellow officers. We need more cameras, they need to be everywhere law enforcement, arrestees, prison and jail inmates are and they need to capture the acts that occur where there are no witnesses or bad witnesses or complicit witnesses.
I was thinking about the part of her statement where she railed against the lack of cooperation from other police officers.
If i were a police officer in Baltimore, I’d be looking at this prosecutor who had charged six officers with murder and other crimes a day after the alleged crime, without conducting any sort of investigation, and I probably wouldn’t want to be in the same room, let alone coming forward to ‘cooperate’.
I’m neither a police officer nor a lawyer — but I have watched “Law and Order” and “NCIS” (as most of us have, I’m sure). Obviously these two groups need to work together and cooperate for the public to be adequately served. When one side or the other poisons the well, as happened here, it just has to make that working relationship significantly more diificult.