Comments on: Charges In Baltimore

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 04 May 2015 00:38:31 +0000

There is no way of knowing what a jury will do, but the case is solid. I would think that politicians would realize that the election of this prosecutor indicates that voters are fed up with the status quo.

The really amazing thing in this case was how blatant the conduct was despite knowing about the video and the physical evidence. It’s pretty lame when a cop can’t even come up with a credible bogus charge to provide him cover for being arrogant SOB. These cops assumed that no one would really question or investigate their conduct. I assume that no one has actually been investigating charges against the police in Baltimore prior to this incident.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sun, 03 May 2015 17:37:36 +0000

And the sad thing is that despite all that evidence, it’s a crapshoot as to whether these cops will actually be convicted or not. Because so many blacks in Baltimore have been kicked out of the jury pool the jury is likely to be majority white and sympathetic to cops, and because the judges are part of the problem in Baltimore they’re likely to give jury instructions that give the jury an excuse to throw out the charges, or else find some technicality to use to overturn a guilty verdict altogether.

Ms. Mosby appears very confident. I suspect, however, that by the end of this she will be much wiser and much more cynical.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 03 May 2015 03:14:49 +0000

They have already viewed private videos as well as the public videos. They have the statements of the officers which don’t correspond to the know facts. They have the medical examiner’s findings. They have the rules and procedures of the Baltimore PD. What exactly does the FOP attorney think they need to prove the case?

I guess the attorney has to complain about something to draw attention away from the facts in the case which show the cops are guilty.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sat, 02 May 2015 18:18:58 +0000

Reading some background on her, she’s basically the Maryland equivalent of the District Attorney for Baltimore City-County, she ran for office against a 4-term white man and won in an upset despite having 1/4th the money and has been in office only four months. Her long-term goal appears to be to become a judge. Not sure if this is the way for her to attain that goal, but she’s certainly made a splash for someone who’s been in office for such a short amount of time!

As for the evidence, the FOP is whining that 2 weeks is too short a time to gather enough evidence for charges. But really, what more evidence do we need? They assaulted a man on the street without probable cause, broke his leg, threw him in a van, and then gave him a “rough ride” that killed him. The medical examiner’s office has verified that it was the “rough ride” that killed him, the video footage shows that it was the cops who grabbed him and dragged him into the van, this is the prosecution equivalent of a man shooting another man in a bar in front of a dozen witnesses.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 02 May 2015 13:53:22 +0000

She has a solid case. The cops screwed up by not providing an illegal switchblade in the evidence. They aren’t even competent enough to cover their tracks, or they believe that the system is so corrupt they don’t have to even make the effort.

She charged what the evidence showed, what she can prove, and that is as good as it gets.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Sat, 02 May 2015 07:02:31 +0000

Prosecutor Marilyn Mosby is young, black, and attractive. The racists are already out in force already trying to trash her. I’ll note that she didn’t do the usual thing that prosecutors do to get officers off, which is to overcharge them with charges that the evidence won’t support. She seems to be serious. The only person charged with 2nd degree murder is the man who drove the van. The rest are charged with assault or involuntary manslaughter, which befits the evidence that’s already public (assaulting a man for running is definitely assault.

But in the end it all depends on the judge she gets. Some of the judges in Maryland are so reflexively pro-police that even if the jury finds the officer guilty, they’ll overturn the verdict on a technicality, like that judge did in Prince Georges County when two of their cops assaulted an affluent (black) college student and one of them got convicted by the jury. Ms. Mosby isn’t prosecuting six cops, in the end. She’s prosecuting an entire system of abuse that has corrupted even the courts in Baltimore, and that system is not going to take that lightly.