Baltimore State Attorney Marilyn Mosby previously stated she was going to pursue justice for Freddie Gray “by any and all means necessary“. Today, in a motion filed by the defense, the extent of Mosby’s activist intention is again reinforced.
In addition to hiding “Brady evidence“, there is a meeting between Mosby and the medical examiner (prior to the autopsy release – and undisclosed by Mosby) which indicates previous elements of her pressuring the ME to change the cause of death from “accidental” to “homicide”.
BALTIMORE – Prosecutors have information indicating that Freddie Gray “attempted to injure himself” during a previous arrest, but have intentionally withheld it from their criminal case against the six Baltimore police officers charged in Gray’s apprehension and death in April, the officers’ attorneys said in a court filing Thursday.
“Based upon information and belief, the State’s Attorney’s Office was informed of this fact, yet failed to disclose to the Defendants any statements, reports, or other communications relating to this information,” they wrote.
[…] In their filing Thursday, the defense attorneys said prosecutors have withheld “multiple witness statements from individuals who stated that Mr. Gray was banging and shaking the van at various points” after his arrest April 12, as well as “police reports, court records, and witness statements indicating that on prior occasions, Mr. Gray had fled from police and attempted to discard drugs.”
A spokeswoman for State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby declined to comment. But in a court filing, prosecutors have said they gave defense attorneys all the evidence to which they are entitled last month as part of the discovery process.
The defense attorneys also said that Mosby failed to disclose her office’s participation in a “private meeting” with Assistant Medical Examiner Carol Allan before receiving Gray’s autopsy report, which ruled his death a homicide.
They also said Mosby was told by police that a knife found on Gray was spring-assisted — and thus illegal — before she brought charges against the officers.
In announcing the charges on May 1, Mosby said the knife was legal, and Gray should not have been arrested.
The defense attorneys wrote that they have “been forced to spend hundreds of hours collectively investigating the State’s violations in order to understand the full breadth of the harm.”
“While the defense has now obtained some of this evidence through its own sources, the defense has no idea of what else the State has failed to disclose.”
They asked the Circuit Court to sanction prosecutors in Mosby’s office for the alleged omissions and remove them from the case, to exclude evidence that they say was improperly omitted from discovery, to force the release of a long list of withheld information that they say they found through their own investigation, and to compensate them for that investigative work.
[…] Defense attorneys said in their motion that there are “multiple statements, reports, data and other evidence” — including evidence they say was produced by the police task force — that were not produced by prosecutors in discovery last month or during an “open-file” review of the evidence last Friday.
[…] They also said the prosecution has withheld witness statements, allegedly provided during the grand jury review of the case, that Gray was on his knees at the fifth and last stop in the van ride, and a police re-creation of the route the van took using advanced scanning technology.
They said the evidence could shine more light on when, where and how Gray was injured, potentially helping the defense of one or more of the officers, all of whom interacted with Gray in different ways at different points during his arrest.
Witness statements that Gray was kneeling at the fifth stop of the van, for instance, “would tend to prove that Mr. Gray’s spinal fracture had not yet occurred and therefore would tend to prove the innocence of some, if not all, of the officers involved,” they wrote.
The evidence — including what was said between prosecutors and Allan, the medical examiner — could also raise questions about the actions of Mosby and other prosecutors, they said, supporting an argument that they be removed from the case. (read more)
