Shortly after the charges were dropped against the remaining officers charged in the police in-custody of Freddie Gray, Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby gave an impassioned speech in front of the Freddie Gray Memorial in west Baltimore.
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Of the six officers charged, three were white and three were black. A judge acquitted three other officers, including the van driver who prosecutors considered the most responsible and another officer who was the highest-ranking of the group.
Gray suffered a severed spine while being transported in the back of a police van, unsecured and with his hands and feet bound, after being arrested on April 12, 2015 while fleeing police.
Gene Ryan, Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police president, called Mosby’s comments outrageous and untrue. Baltimore erupted into violent protests, riots and arson in the days following Gray’s funeral.
DeRay Mckesson, a leader of the movement who later ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Baltimore, echoed Mosby’s call for criminal justice reform, saying “someone should be held responsible” for Gray’s death.
Officers acted reasonably in arresting Gray, and the medical examiner concluded that Gray would not have been injured if he had remained where he was placed – prone on the floor.
Critics of Mosby’s have long raised questions about whether she overcharged the officers.
“At the motion’s hearing for State v Garrett Miller this morning, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office decided not to prosecute the remaining cases related to the arrest and death of Freddie Gray”, a spokesman for the Maryland judiciary said. However, Chief Deputy State’s Attorney Michael Schatzow told the judge that prosecutors were dropping charged against Miller, William Porter, and Alicia White. The U.S. Justice Department has also launched an investigation into allegations of widespread abuse and unlawful arrests by the department and the officers have sued State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, saying she intentionally filed false charges against them.
Mosby was scheduled to address a news conference later on Wednesday.
“I need not remind you”, she said, “that the only loss – and the greatest loss – in all of this was that of Freddie Gray’s life”.
“Without real 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”, Mosby said.
Miller testified against his colleagues at previous trials and will be tried by two prosecutors new to the case.
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The case also led the police department to overhaul its use-of-force policy. “There have been many gains throughout this journey to ensure that what happened to Freddie Gray never happens to another person that comes into contact with police”, Mosby said. Lead detectives that were completely uncooperative and started a counter-investigation to disprove the state’s case by not executing search warrants pertaining to text messages among the police officers involved in the case.
