Marilyn Mosby: Insanity Defined

Many believe the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. For them, we might consider including an image with the definition — the image of Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby.

Mosby, and her obedient if misguided courtroom prosecutors, are now not just zero for four in their efforts to convict Baltimore police officers in the death of Freddie Gray. They are zero for 22, since not a single charge faced by the officers as they approached trial has held water.

While the national news is now hotly focused on the Republican National Convention and on the painful assassination of eight police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, the Freddie Gray case seems like yesterday’s news — a tiny article in the regional or state section of any major publication. The convulsive violence, arson, and attacks on police that followed Gray’s in-custody injury and subsequent death has receded to almost footnote status while six experienced Baltimore cops have fought mightily for their names and futures.

This week dealt the fourth stinging defeat for the politically and ego-driven Mosby and we’re again wondering what, if anything, has she learned this time.

The words of Judge Barry G. Williams, an African American who formerly worked in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, must be ringing in the ears of the failed State’s Attorney and her embarrassed prosecutors, his opinion sounding more like a law school lecture on evidence than a judgment in a high-profile police misconduct case. He intoned that the state had repeatedly and consistently failed to meet their burden of proving charges beyond a reasonable doubt, instead asking the court to rely on “presumptions or assumptions.”

More here