Baltimore resident Freddie Gray died in April 2015 as a result of injuries sustained while being improperly restrained in a police van. Protests over his death turned violent, and in the middle of the unrest, Marilyn Mosby, the Baltimore City stateβs attorney, stood on the stairs of the War Memorial in downtown Maryland to announce that she would be filing criminal charges against six police officers over Grayβs death.
That proclamation made Mosby something of a hero to a nation of people who had suffered through one too many failed prosecutions of police across the country, including the officers involved in the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y.
Suggested Reading
Fast-forward 18 months, and Mosby not only failed to convict any of the officers involved in Grayβs death but alsoΒ is now being sued for defamation by five of the six officers she indicted, it was announced in July.
Mosbyβs husband, Nick Mosby, sits on the City Council, representing the district where Gray was arrested. He, too, was thought to be going places politically, but an abandoned campaign for mayor of Baltimore, as well as his imminent departure from the City Council, has led to wide criticism of both him and his wife. A Baltimore weekly paper recently declared them the βBest Failed Political Dynasty.β
A recent in-depth profileΒ in the New York Times Magazine examines the rise and fall of Marilyn Mosby, discussing everything from herΒ childhood to her rise to the stateβs attorneyβs office, and continuing through her ascension into the national spotlight.Β
Mosby discusses her reasons for taking on the case against the police officers involved in Grayβs death and the frustrations she experienced during the failed prosecutions.
In the end, Mosby appears to be the only public official who paid for Grayβs death, when all she was trying to do was get justice for him.
Read more at the New York Times.
Straight From
Sign up for our free daily newsletter.