On Wednesday, she was fiery and indignant as she spoke from behind a podium across the street from the public-housing complex where Gray was arrested. “There is a widespread skepticism of the criminal justice system”.
Advertisement
Baltimore’s police union had called on prosecutors to drop the charges against the remaining officers.
She says it’s part of a bigger conversation about police training, increasing diversity and community relations. Speaking at the site of Gray’s death, she told reporters that she still blames police for the young man’s death, pointing out that the medical examine found the death to be a homicide.
“We’ve all bore witness to an inherent bias that is a direct result of when police police themselves”, she said. Williams previously acquitted Officers Edward Nero and Caesar Goodson, as well as Lt. Brian Rice, via bench trials earlier this year. Having failed to obtain a conviction in any of the trials thus far, Mosby has been under increasing pressure to abandon the effort if not resign her position entirely.
Gray was arrested when he fled officers unprovoked in a high-crime area.
In some cases, charges depended on prosecutors arguing that there was no probable cause to arrest Gray in the first place – an unusual strategy, as NPR’s Jennifer Ludden has reported.
Prosecutors also sought to have the officers testify against each other, even though some of them had not yet been tried.
Along with Miller, Sgt. Alicia White still faced trial along with the retrial of Officer William Porter, noted NPR.
She declined to take questions, citing a lawsuit that the officers have filed against her.
Tessa Hill-Aston said Wednesday that she thinks the state’s attorney’s office did a “remarkable job”.
The death sparked unrest and led to riots in Baltimore, Maryland. The results are expected soon.
No reputations hinged on the case’s outcome as much as Mosby’s and that of her husband, Nick Mosby, a councilman for Baltimore’s west side who announced his mayoral candidacy shortly after Rawlings-Blake left the race.
Mosby began the press conference by expressing frustration with the judge’s gag order, which she said forced her office to remain silent in the face of criticism.
Prosecutors alleged that the officers were criminally negligent when they defied a written directive to buckle all suspects into a seat belt in the van. Instead, they were accused of placing Gray head-first into the metal compartment on his stomach. Grand juries in NY and Ferguson, Missouri, by way of comparison, reviewed evidence of similarly controversial deaths for weeks before ultimately deciding not to bring criminal charges.
Gray’s family received a $6.4 million settlement from the city.
Advertisement
Still, Hill-Aston said she understands the decision to drop the charges “based on [Mosby’s] rationale about money and feeling that she was not going to get any convictions, that it would be a waste of the court’s time”.
