BALTIMORE _ Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby on Thursday said her office will work to overturn any criminal convictions since 2015 that relied solely on the word of seven city police officers recently indicted on federal racketeering charges.
"Understanding and recognizing that the credibility of these officers has now been directly called into question, it is incumbent upon us as ministers of justice to do what's right and to pursue justice over convictions while simultaneously prioritizing public safety," Mosby said.
Her office has already identified 150 closed cases that are "possibly tainted" by the involvement of the officers, including 45 in which the defendants are incarcerated, she said.
Many of the cases involve alleged gun crimes, as the indicted officers were all members of an elite Gun Trace Task Force. The unit had been repeatedly praised by the department for taking a large volume of guns off the streets, at a time when gun violence has claimed lives at a historic rate in the city.
A team of prosecutors is now assessing the cases individually to see if they hold up without the testimony of the indicted officers, Mosby said.
If prosecutors "cannot identify additional, independent, corroborative evidence separate and apart from the credibility of these officers" _ such as forensic evidence, videos, or statements from other witnesses _ they will join with the Office of the Public Defender or the defendant's private counsel to file joint motions to vacate the convictions, Mosby said.
Cases in which defendants are incarcerated will be prioritized, she said.
In addition to the adjudicated cases, Mosby said her office also identified 50 active cases for review, and has already dropped the charges in more than 30 of them. Another 18 are set to be "resolved" by next week, she said.
Thirteen of the active cases involved incarcerated defendants, Mosby said. Ten have had their charges dropped and been released.
Baltimore deputy public defender Natalie Finegar said Mosby's "consent to dismiss these cases was a necessary response to the allegations against the indicted officers," but falls short of restoring justice to all those arrested by the indicted officers over the course of many years.
The announcement comes weeks after the indictment was first announced by Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein on March 1.
Since then, prosecutors have been dropping charges as individual cases involving the indicted officers came to court. On Friday, prosecutors dropped the first charges related to an adjudicated case, after a judge granted a defendant arrested by two of the officers a new trial.
Mosby has said her office had no way of knowing the officers were allegedly untrustworthy and was not privy to the federal investigation. Defense attorneys in the city, including public defenders, have said several of the officers have been the subject of complaints for years.
The seven officers _ Sgt. Wayne Jenkins and detectives Momodu Gondo, Evodio Hendrix, Daniel Hersl, Jemell Rayam, Marcus Taylor and Maurice Ward _ are accused of shaking down citizens, filing false court paperwork and making fraudulent overtime claims, all while Justice Department investigators were scrutinizing the department for what they concluded was widespread civil rights violations.
They have pleaded not guilty, and ordered held in detention pending trial. Their attorneys have argued they are innocent, brave men who dedicated their lives to protecting some of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Baltimore by taking hardened criminals off the streets.
City Councilman Brandon Scott, chair of the public safety committee, said Mosby's review is "the epitome of fairness and unfairness at the same time," because the defendants cleared of charges likely will include innocent victims of the officers, but also criminals who are guilty of committing violence.
"If we have these officers out here doing these atrocious things ... we have to deal with the consequences. That's only fair," Scott said. "But when you talk about cases that can involve illegal guns and people being shot and the trauma for those people and their families, it's also unfair."
"That's why it shows we must have integrity at every level" of the criminal justice system, Scott said, "because when that trust is violated by someone who is sworn to uphold the law, this is the kind of collateral damage we get."
T.J. Smith, a police spokesman, said the police department is committed to assisting Mosby's office with its review of cases.
Smith said it is "frustrating anytime charges are dropped," but police "trust that the reviews are being carefully done."
Finegar questioned why Mosby's review of cases only goes back to 2015, and said her office remains committed to "seeking justice" for the "thousands of other Baltimore residents" who "had their lives interrupted, and often destroyed, by these officers' wrongdoing in cases that predate 2015 and in cases where the sentence is over but the conviction still impacts the ability to get a job or a home."
Finegar also said Mosby's office should be working to improve how it identifies problematic, untrustworthy officers and discloses such concerns to defense attorneys. If it does not, she said, a similar situation could develop in the future with other problematic officers.
"If we don't revamp the system, we're just going to be in this position again and again and again," Finegar said.
Mosby said her office is looking at cases dating to 2015 because that is the time frame covered by the allegations in the federal indictment. She said her office already discloses all concerns about officers' credibility to defense attorneys.
She stressed that every case involving the indicted officers will not be dropped.
"Just because one of the officers was tangentially involved in a defendant's case, this does not constitute an immediate means to be released from incarceration, nor does it mean that we will automatically seek to vacate the conviction," she said. "This is a matter of public safety, and we want to ensure that those that legally deserve to be incarcerated serve their sentence and pay their debt to society."
