Speaking at a news conference Wednesday morning, Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby defended prosecuting the six officers in the Freddie Gray case regardless of the outcome, noting that "as a mother," the decision to drop the remaining charges was "agonizing."
She said that the decision to move forward with the case “was not and has never been an indictment on the entire Baltimore Police Department” and dismissed accusations that her efforts in the case meant she was anti-police.
“That’s simply not the case,” she said, “I’m anti-police brutality.”
“Even though the media has made this about everything but the untimely death of [Gray], my office has never wavered in our commitment to seek justice on his behalf,” she said.
Doing so proved to be a challenge, she added, noting the “inherent bias that is a direct result of when police police themselves.”
“As the world has witnessed over the past 14 months, the prosecution of on-duty police officers in this country is unsurprisingly rare and blatantly fraught with systemic and inherent complications, unlike with other cases where prosecutors work closely with the police to investigate what actually occurred, what we realized very early on in this case is that police investigating police … was problematic. There was a reluctance and an obvious bias that was consistently exemplified, not by the entire Baltimore Police Department, but by individuals within the Baltimore Police Department at every state of the investigation, which became blatantly apparent in the subsequent trials,” she said.
"We do not not believe that Freddie Gray killed himself."
[G]iven [Circuit Judge Barry G.] Williams' acquittal of Nero, Goodson and Rice and the likelihood that the remaining officers would also choose bench trials before him, Mosby said she had to acknowledge the "dismal likelihood" that her office would be able to secure a conviction.
"After much thought and prayer it has become clear that without being able to work with an independent investigatory agency from the very start, without having a say in the election of whether cases proceed in front of a judge or jury, without communal oversight of police in this community, without substantive reforms to the current criminal justice system, we could try this case 100 times and cases just like it and we would still end up with the same result," she said.
In conclusion, Mosby pledged to continue to "fight for a fair and equitable justice system for all."
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