Marilyn Mosby: On the Case.

On Friday (1/5/15) Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby announced that criminal charges would be brought against six police officers over the death of Freddie Gray and ordered their immediate arrest. The police union responded by calling for Ms Mosby to step down over an apparent conflicts of interest and for a special prosecutor to be appointed to the case.

Ms Mosby was elected as prosecutor in November 2014 at one of the numerous local races the accompanied the mid-term elections. You may remember that this was when both the Micheal Brown case in Ferguson and the Eric Garner case in New York City (NYC) were at their peak and Ms Mosby campaigned on a platform of tackling police racism and violence. Since then the allegations in the Micheal Brown case have been found to be entirely false and the allegations in the Eric Garner case have been rejected by a Grand Jury although NYC's prosecutor and Mayor's office are still fighting to keep the reasons why secret.

Therefore it seems extremely convenient that just 4 months after taking up office a case that allows her to regain the credibility of her campaign and follow through on her main election pledge has landed right in Ms Mosby's lap. In fact you might go so far as to suggest she was manipulating the situation to fit her political agenda. The fact that Ms Mosby has decided to prosecute three white police officers who, by her own admission, had no contact with Mr Gray at the time he is alleged to have sustained his injuries certainly increases suspicion.

Marilyn Mosby is married to Nick Mosby who is the councilman for Baltimore's 7th district where Freddie Gray and his family live and also where he was arrested. If Ms Mosby succeeds in prosecuting 6 police officers over Mr Gray's death then her husband's political future is pretty much secured. However if the prosecution fails then Mr Mosby's political career is pretty much over. His current term ends this year. As Ms Mosby made quite clear in Friday's press conference both she and her husband are public employees on the public payroll. So if Mr Mosby were to lose his job it would have a significant impact on the family income. The couple have two children. People will lie, cheat, steal and even kill to protect their children's futures.

Finally the Gray family are being represented in the case by Billy Murphy. Whilst Billy Murphy was working as Judge Ms Mosby interned as his clerk where he mentored her. Mr Murphy went on to donate some USD4000 - the maximum allowed by law - to Ms Mosby's election campaign and he served on her transition team between the November election and her taking up office.

Individually any one of these apparent conflicts of interests could be overlooked. After all every prosecutor in the US have to campaign for election and sometimes politicians campaign on issues that are actually true. However taken together - especially the relationship with Billy Murphy - they are the sort of thing that form the basis for a misconduct in public office investigation.

That is something that will definitely have to be looked at because in pressing charges Ms Mosby has not only decided to pre-empt the required Grand Jury process but also arrest and oppose bail for 6 individuals despite them clearly not being a flight risk, there being no risk of them committing further offences before trial and the state not yet possessing the indictment needed to formally question their innocence. 

19:30 on  4/5/15 (UK date).