May 2, 2015

"Who Is This Objectively Badass Attorney Running The Freddie Gray Investigation?"

Headline at a Huffpo article that's teased on the Huffpro front page with "BALTIMORE BADASS":



If the question is the abuse of government power in the form of the police, the answer is not mindless cheerleading for another form of government power, a prosecutor.

Objectively Badass...

Yeah, let's be objective. Let's be level-headed and demand that all government power — police, prosecutors, the lot — operate within the bounds of the law.

My criticism is of the headline and the front-page teaser. The article doesn't contain the word "badass" or present Marilyn Mosby as anything that warrants the use of the word "badass." She herself is saying appropriate things like "I uphold the law" and "At the end of the day I’m here to do my job. It’s about applying justice fairly and equally to those with and without a badge. Did I treat this case any different in the pursuit of justice? No, I didn’t."

I wonder what pushed Huffpo to use that word "badass." I doubt if the word would have been chosen if Mosby were a white male.

38 comments:

rhhardin said...

Did we all listen to the same speech?

She's doing crowd appeasement.

Badass just means that she's taking the black mob's side.

Anuything you riot for is true.

rhhardin said...

She's the Trevon Martin attorney exactly. Overcharge, too hell with evidence, there's a crowd to pander to.

Ann Althouse said...

"Did we all listen to the same speech?"

My statements are about the headline and the article, not the speech.

Take the text of the speech and write an article that would go with the headline "badass." You could do that, but that's not what's happening in the article.

James Pawlak said...

She is a racist leading AND following mob actions.

"Pants up, don't loot!"

mccullough said...

I wonder what effect the charges will have on the morale of the police department. Baltimore is a violent city. I'm surprised anyone joins their police department.

Tank said...

I listened to her announcement on the radio in my car driving back from Court. My impression was of a weak person trying to shout/sound strong with weak facts compared to the charges recited.

Badass? That is a strange description here.

There appear to be some serious conflict issues too.

Hagar said...

Bumped.

The really bad fallout from this is going to be felt in the large cities across the country for years to come.
The Democrats are fouling their own nests by calling for "justice for Freddie Gray" and a judicial lynching of the Baltimore cops.

David said...

Mosby's political career just took off and the Mayor's is in the tank. Though it's hard to imagine how she could have declined to charge, given the evidence and the context, the Huffington Headline is a great statement of the political result that Mosby is enjoying.

Make way for Governor Mosby,

rhhardin said...

Sort of a "More Mush from the Wimp" complaint.

Laslo Spatula said...

I hear the Theme from 'Shaft' emanate from that Headline.

"They say that Mosby is a bad mother--"

I am Laslo.

rwnutjob said...

Need a locomotive to go with your railroad?

Humperdink said...

"I wonder what effect the charges will have on the morale of the police department. Baltimore is a violent city. I'm surprised anyone joins their police department."

Couldn't agree more. Remember when NY's Mayor Big Bird decided to take on the cops? I see a repeat here, even though she's the DA. Minimal policing, crime increases. Especially after the stand down order during the riots. The cops took some serious abuse at the hands of the thugs .... er .... children.

This will not end well.

MayBee said...

I do find it amazing how liberals- LIBERALS!- think a prosecutor bringing the most serious charges is more justice than the prosecutor who didn't press charges (the guy in Ferguson).

sinz52 said...

Hey, if the black community in Baltimore isn't siding with the cops, then why should we?

They know their neighborhoods are crime-ridden. But they don't want the cops to treat their neighborhoods as an occupied country either.

They remind me of what the Iraqis said to America:

"We know there's terrorism in our country. Get the hell out anyway."

I'm Full of Soup said...

Most libruls are weak cowards so they like the thought that they may have a badass in their ranks.

Hagar said...

This is a political situation, and it is not being handled well. "Justice" is secondary.

It is going to be a long, hot summer across America.

traditionalguy said...

The shit storm of criticism of this smart young Lawyer for doing her job correctly is amazing. The needed thing in Baltimore was her quick and accurate response to the filing of charges in the face of a PR campaign "that all facts are unknown so nothing can be done to bring this into a court and have a trial."

The same doofuses that proclaimed no judgemental comments are allowed without first having perfect knowledge of the facts that happen to be hidden away, are the ones now saying they judge her without any knowledge of what she has learned in her investigation.

Hint: This is not a race war. It was a common police brutality case being covered up like the last 100 similar cases in Baltimore, until this smart and courageous Lawyer decided to do her job right when that was exactly what was needed.

Just because she is not pure northern European and not pure West African Tribal, but a standard issue hybrid American does not make her an enemy.

She is age 35 which is the sweet spot for trial lawyers. She has enough experience to do the job and has the dedication to succeed at her job. She is not an over the hill famous old lawyer who has lost his edge.

I say hide and watch her do this case the way it needs to be done.

sane_voter said...

I wonder how long it will be for all of this to finally blows over and these no justice no peace folks can get back to murdering each other. I doubt the state's attorney will be around to be badass with those cases.

2013 crime stats

Baltimore had a murder rate of 37.4 per 100,000 and a total of 235 murders, making it the 5th highest in the country for towns over 100,000 in population. Detroit was number one with 45.2. Chicago, considered the murder capital of the US, had a rate of 15.4 and a total of 414 murders in 2013.

MayBee said...

I want to know what it is the groups who organize these protests and pre-packaged narratives want?

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I'd have given Huffpo a pass had it described the prosecutor as a "swinging dick."

Hagar said...

It is not a good thing when the Bloods and the Crips give street interviews on national TV and state that if the authorities can't keep order, they will.

Anonymous said...

Baltimore is done as a convention city. You can thank this badass, because people are cancelling in droves. You think they were impoverished before?? WHO would bring their business there???

RecChief said...

is that a picture of Mayor Room to Destroy?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

She herself is saying appropriate things like "I uphold the law" and "At the end of the day I’m here to do my job."

Towards the end of her press conference she started sounding more like an activist than a court officer.

@ 16:12 "this is a moment, this is your moment... and as young people our time is now"

Mark Caplan said...

Badass: "a tough, uncompromising or intimidating person."

The article says state attorney Mosely "dropped a bomb" by charging six police officers with second-degree murder, manslaughter, and assault. That does make her a tough, uncompromising, intimidating person, hence, in African American vernacular English, a badass.

But I agree it was impolite to call attention to the state attorney's race, gender, and youthful inexperience with the "badass" vulgarism.

MayBee said...

It is not a good thing when the Bloods and the Crips give street interviews on national TV and state that if the authorities can't keep order, they will.

Do any of the interviewers say, "Hey, Gang Member. If you guys stopped your normal gang activity, your neighborhood would not need such heavy policing in the first place. Why don't you just stop forever?"

I'm Full of Soup said...

This will blow over and the Inner Harbor's beauty will bring the conventions back.

I'm Full of Soup said...

This will blow over and the Inner Harbor's beauty will bring the conventions back.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Any death in custody should begin with the presumption of guilt on the police. If it was an accident, the police should be forced to prove it was an accident.

What bothers me about most of the comments is that they ignore the fact that someone died because of what the police did. There's no way around that. The man is dead. It doesn't matter what group he belonged to. He was completely helpless and something the police did killed him, with no justification. This wasn't a shoot/don't shoot situation.

jr565 said...

instead of "bad ass" it might end up being "bad prosecutor".
Having a black female prosecutor end up as Nifong will hurt blacks, women and prosecutors.
She might be able to pull it off, but from what I've read there is no real case (yet) and it seems she has overcharged.

richard mcenroe said...

Did she objectively and badassedly happen to mention she's taken money from the lawyer representing the family, or that he ran her election campaign?

richard mcenroe said...

Any death involving John Lynch should begin with the presumption of John Lynch's guilt.

khesanh0802 said...

Have to go with traditional guy and John Lynch on this one. An investigation was conducted, charges were brought and now the situation will be played out in the courts. The "trial" has been removed from the streets.

I don't understand why everybody is bitching about Mosby. She appears to be doing her job and, for my money, is showing some decent leadership by defending the police in general and successfully deflating the protests at the same time.

jr565 said...

kheshahn wrote:
I don't understand why everybody is bitching about Mosby. She appears to be doing her job and, for my money, is showing some decent leadership by defending the police in general and successfully deflating the protests at the same time

if she's charging murder for crimes that are not murder, she's over charging. That's a big problem.
Does she really have evidence that can back up a murder charge?

Bruce Hayden said...

The shit storm of criticism of this smart young Lawyer for doing her job correctly is amazing. The needed thing in Baltimore was her quick and accurate response to the filing of charges in the face of a PR campaign "that all facts are unknown so nothing can be done to bring this into a court and have a trial."

I think that you are jumping to conclusions, and in particular, that there was sufficient evidence yet to indict. A couple of things to consider:
1) was the knife really legal, both in the state and in the city? (Cities in MD apparently often have stricter knife laws)
2) did the arresting officer (and arguably, all the officers down the line) know that it was a legal knife? Is there any reason to question this? If they didn't know, then they may have qualified immunity AND the arrest may not have been illegal.
3) Were they able to interview all of the cops involved prior to the arrests? I had heard that they had a 10 day delay in their union contracts, and if they had not all been interviewed before, they surely aren't going to be now.
4) Was Gray on parole, probation, etc., or free on bail, at the time of his arrest? If so, it is likely that he couldn't legally posses the knife, and the cops may have been perfectly in their rights to arrest him at that time. Gray apparently had a fairly extensive rap sheet at the time of this arrest, and much of it had been fairly recent.
Etc.

Ethically, the prosecutor should not have indicted unless she had a reasonable belief that she could prove each and every element of every crime for which she indicted one of the officers. The standard is not whether there is some evidence, and with wishful thinking, she might, possibly get a conviction. And, it is even worse if the justification is not such a reasonable belief, but rather, to calm down the community from the racial tensions. But, then, last I knew, Angela Corey still has her law license.

Bruce Hayden said...

if she's charging murder for crimes that are not murder, she's over charging. That's a big problem. Does she really have evidence that can back up a murder charge?

I think more than that is required. Rather, I think that the evidence has to be strong enough that each element of each charge is likely to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Which is to say that my problem is with the word "can", and think that it properly should be somewhere between "should" and "will".

Gusty Winds said...

Objectivity is make believe in governments and courts. Let's please quit pretending it ever did, or now does exist.

Please tell me blind justice is not actually taught as a reality in law schools.

khesanh0802 said...

@jr565 You are assuming she doesn't know what she is doing. Why would you assume that she is "overcharging"? What basis do you have for saying that? Though I am not a lawyer it appeared that each police had several charges brought against them from severe to mildly severe. That struck me as a good sound tactic leaving the prosecutor room to maneuver should she decide not to pursue the more serious charges.

There's a lot of nit-picking going on with no more knowledge than a guy like Sharpton has when he goes off half-cocked.

My point, which I believe remains valid, is that she smartly defended the police in general while creating a solution that got people off the streets. She is, after all, a politician and as such was quite effective.