Good day all. A little while ago, the 4th police officer in the Freddie Gray case was acquitted of all charges brought against him. Baltimore State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby Now has No Wins, 1 tie and 3 losses.
Mosby’s most recent crushing defeat involved Baltimore Lt. Brian Rice. His case was heard by a judge rather than a jury, and the judge found the evidence against Lt. Rice to be seriouly lacking. Here are some of the details from The Baltimore Sun:
Prosecutors in Baltimore have failed for the fourth time to secure a conviction in the Freddie Gray case, with Circuit Judge Barry Williams acquitting Lt. Brian Rice of all charges related to Gray’s arrest and death.
Williams cleared Rice, 42, of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office in a downtown Baltimore courtroom on Monday morning. The judge had dismissed a second-degree assault charge at the trial’s midpoint, and prosecutors dropped a second misconduct charge at the start.
The cases against the six officers have been cratering for months. The first case went to a jury and ended up with the jury unable to reach a verdict. The remaining three were all bench trials where the judge rendered the verdict. (This is an option a defendant may choose)
Williams previously acquitted two other officers — Edward Nero and Caesar Goodson Jr. — of all charges in May and June, respectively. A fourth officer, William Porter, had a mistrial in December after a 12-member jury could not reach a consensus on any of the charges against him.
This leaves two more trials and a retrial of William Porter.
Officer Garrett Miller is scheduled to go to trial next, on July 27. Porter is scheduled to be retried on Sept. 6. And Sgt. Alicia White, is scheduled to go to trial Oct. 13. All of the officers have pleaded not guilty.
I suspect all three are going to request bench trials. Frankly, Mosby should just give up and drop the charges against the three remaining officers. As each trial has progressed, more and more evidence of what looks like gross prosecutorial misconduct has come out. The biggest issue was Mosby meeting with the Medical Examiner, who had originally ruled Gray’s death accidental, and all of a sudden, it was changed to homicide.
I’ve said before that thanks to Marilyn Mosby’s utter incompetence, we will never know what really happened to Freddie Gray. What probably will happen is Mosby will be entering the private sector fairly soon. I hope she enjoys asking “Would you like fries with your order?” because as a lawyer, she is a disgrace. I’m no legal eagle, but I’m hearing rumors of formal complaints being brought against her that could end in her disbarment. We shall see.
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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