“I just hope that whatever happens, Freddie gets the justice that he deserves.”
Kiona Mack, a 25-year-old Baltimore resident and friend of Freddie Gray, told ThinkProgress she is watching the hearings in her friend’s case closely. Mack recorded on her cellphone the now-viral video of Gray being dragged into a police van by Baltimore City police officers in April, seven days before he died as a result of a severe spinal injury.
Beginning Wednesday, a judge in a downtown Baltimore courthouse will hear arguments in the case against six officers charged for Gray’s arrest and death. In pre-trial motions on Wednesday, defense attorneys will argue the case should be dismissed, or State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby should be recused. Next week, they will argue that the case should be moved outside of Baltimore.
Protests started early Wednesday morning and police were ready in riot gear with buses prepared to take away people they arrest. Officers took extra steps like cancelling their leave to prepare for protesters, who plan to fight the defense’s motions.
“I heard they’re trying to move the case out of Baltimore and get Marilyn Mosby off the case, which I think is unfair,” Mack told ThinkProgress. “Nobody else gets to change their venue. When they commit a crime in the city, they get charged in the city, they go to trial in the city. If they are able to change the venue, to me, that’s just injustice and I’m going to be very upset about that.”
Gray’s death in April touched off days of protests and uprising across Baltimore, which were exacerbated by the extreme, combative police presence in the city. When Mosby announced indictments against the six officers involved in May, many in Baltimore immediately viewed her as a champion of reform. After officers in other high-profile cases in cities like Ferguson and New York were let off the hook, the indictments signaled that justice and reform could be in Baltimore’s future.
But the defense attorneys will argue Wednesday that Mosby should be recused from the trial, alleging that she is prosecuting them for political gain and that she charged the officers in order to bring peace to Baltimore amidst its unrest. Their motion points to Mosby’s comments from her press conference that day — “I heard your call for no justice, no peace. Your peace is sincerely needed as I work to deliver justice on behalf of this young man” — arguing that her statement violates the law on prosecutor conduct.
“I’m not surprised that they’re trying to move it,” Baltimore activist Megan Kenny told ThinkProgress. “I’m not surprised that they’re trying to get Mosby off the case. I think that if the trial were to be moved, there certainly would be less likelihood of the city’s problems being addressed.”
Whether or not the trial brings about meaningful reform still depends on the outcome. The judge could still dismiss the charges against the officers, or a jury could eventually acquit them, said Lawrence Brown, a public health professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore.
“State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby was elected by the citizens of Baltimore,” he told ThinkProgress, explaining that her supporters were mostly the black residents of the city.
“In terms of the message that it would send to the community — especially the community that has been victimized by police brutality disproportionately here in the city of Baltimore — I think it would be a terrible signal that the person that the residents of this city elected would not be able to work on this trial,” he said.
Ninety-five percent of prosecutors in the United States are white, Brown said, and just one percent are women of color. If Mosby is allowed to stay on the case, he said it could signal to other cities that the racial disparities and the lack of black prosecutors across the country are significant problems.
Brown called the motion to move the case out of Baltimore “catastrophic.” He pointed to the 1992 Rodney King trial — which was moved outside of Los Angeles County — in which the predominantly-white jury acquitted the officers involved.
“There’s no way that the suburban demographic, which is disproportionately white, is going to convict those officers,” he said. “It’s not just the fact that they wouldn’t convict them which would make people angry. It’s the fact that a Baltimore jury wouldn’t have the chance to render justice that would potentially send Baltimore into a second round of rioting this year.”
Baltimore activists, including the Baltimore People’s Power Assembly and Tawanda Jones, whose brother was killed by Baltimore cops, planned protests outside the courthouse on Wednesday. Jones told ThinkProgress she will move her regular Wednesday night protest to the courthouse and Sharon Black of the People’s Power Assembly told the Baltimore Sun the group will be there to “keep the attention” on three issues.
“Our message is pretty obvious. Do not drop the charges. No change in venue. Do not recuse Marilyn Mosby.”
Update:
A Baltimore judge ruled Thursday morning that the trials of the officers will stay in Baltimore, finding that the intense media coverage and fear of more protests do not preclude an unbiased jury pool.