Mosby was heralded when she announced the charges against the six officers, but those charges, though they served the intended purpose of quelling the riot, have now come in for scrutiny as people awaken to the fact that she has presented scant evidence to support them.
Prominent among Mosby’s critics has been Page Croyder, a former prosecutor in the Baltimore State’s Attorney’s Office. Mosby’s decision to file hasty charges against the six officers, Croyder writes in her blog, “reflects inexperience, recklessness, political ambition, or all of the above.” Croyder appeared on CNN and made a compelling argument that Mosby had acted irresponsibly in bringing the charges as quickly as she did, a decision Mosby may come to regret when she fails to deliver what she has in effect promised the mob: guilty verdicts against the six accused police officers.
Most egregious among Mosby’s lapses is her failure to present evidence supporting the second-degree murder charge against Officer Caesar Goodson, the driver of the police transport van in which Freddie Gray suffered his fatal injury. All we know, and all that Mosby will ever prove, is that Gray was in apparent good health when he was placed in the van and that he was severely injured when he came out. There is only conjecture as to how he came to suffer that injury, and conjecture is insufficient even to sustain an indictment, much less a conviction. Furthermore, Mosby claims Freddie Gray was arrested without probable cause, but the grounds for arresting him are infinitely more solid than those on which Mosby bases the charges against the officers. I predict that by the time this carnival has run its course, not a single one of the officers will stand convicted of any of the charges brought, and that all six will prevail in the civil lawsuit against Mosby that will inevitably follow.
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