Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake charged Wednesday that State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby caved in to political pressure in the Freddie Gray case and failed to do a thorough investigation before charging six police officers.
“You can't bow to political pressure and charge when you're not ready,” the mayor said. “You got to stand up, be in the big role and say to the people if you need time to investigate."
She was firing back at comments Mosby made in a New York Times Magazine article posted online Wednesday.
Mosby accused the mayor and then-Police Commissioner Anthony Batts of giving “misinformation to reporters” while her office investigated Gray’s 2015 death from a broken neck while in police custody.
Gray’s death led to widespread rioting, looting and arson. The trials of the police officers ended with two acquittals and one hung jury before Mosby dropped all remaining charges.
In the article by Baltimore writer Wil S. Hylton, Mosby accused Batts of fudging information given to reporters.
“First Batts said there were three stops, and we knew at that point there were four or five,” she said.
Rawlings-Blake said Mosby “doesn’t have an understanding of the role of a prosecutor,” which is “different than the role of the mayor and the administration.”
Mosby spokeswoman Rochelle Ritchie said in a statement the state’s attorney office stands by “the decisions, legal theories, charges, and assertions set forth in the statement of probable cause and during all proceedings regarding the death of Freddie Gray.”
She denied the charges were politically motivated and said they were “about the pursuit of justice for an innocent 25-year-old man who lost his life in the custody of the police.”
In the article, Mosby described a telephone conversation in which she hung up on the mayor in anger.
Rawlings-Blake said “the part of the conversation that [Mosby] didn’t’ share was that Mosby asked her and Batts to hold off on not putting information out there.”
The mayor said she information public as soon as she received it.
