Attorneys for the six Baltimore police officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray filed a motion Friday to dismiss the case and are demanding that the state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, recuse herself.
“Rarely in the history of any criminal case has a prosecutor so directly maintained so many conflicts of interest,” reads the 109-page motion filed on behalf of the six officers.
Mosby filed charges against the six officers last Friday in the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray. Gray died on April 19, a week after being arrested following a police pursuit. Mosby has claimed that Gray was illegally arrested and did not receive adequate medical attention despite requesting it.
The motion makes the case that Mosby faces numerous conflicts of interest.
The 35-year-old Mosby and her husband, Nick Mosby, a Baltimore city councilman, will gain politically and financially through the case, the motion states.
Nick Mosby represents what the motion describes as “ground zero for the violence turbulence that took place after the death of Freddie Gray.”
His district encompasses the area where Gray was arrested and where riots broke out last month.
“He clearly has a professional and personal interest in the need to eliminate the rioting and destruction of personal property in his District,” the motion asserts.
The motion also cites a romantic relationship between one of Mosby’s top investigators, Janice Bledsoe, and WBAL reporter Jayne Miller. The relationship is significant because Miller obtained an exclusive interview with Donta Allen, the 22-year-old who was riding in the back of the police van with Gray. The motion states that Allen’s statements to police investigators differs from what he told Miller. It also questions how it was that Miller learned of Allen’s identity and states that she may be called as a material witness at any trial.
Mosby has also had a political relationship with Billy Murphy Jr., the attorney for the Gray family. Murphy Jr. donated $5,000 to Mosby’s campaign for state’s attorney. She also appointed him to her transition committee.
The motion notes another case involving Mosby and Murphy. On Thursday, attorneys for a Baltimore police officer filed a motion in Baltimore District Court requesting a hearing to determine whether Mosby dropped charges against another officer, Thomas Schmidt, who was accused of strangling a dog last year.
Charges against Schmidt were dropped just after Mosby took office in January. His attorney for the case was Murphy Jr.
In a separate motion filed on Friday to dismiss the case against the officers, attorneys noted that only 13 minutes elapsed between the time that an application for a statement of charges was filed and the time that the arrest warrant issued.
The attorneys argued that that “very brief interlude” was not nearly enough time for Mosby and her investigators to go over the filed charges.
Besides the conflicts of interest accusations, Mosby has come under fire for the substance of her case against the officers.
Part of her case rests on whether Gray was carrying an illegal knife at the time of his arrest. Last week, Mosby stated that the knife was legal under Maryland law. But the officers who arrested Gray reported that the knife was a “spring action” model, which are illegal in Baltimore, which has tougher knife laws than the rest of the state.
Mosby’s case took another hit with the release of a report from CNN which cited law enforcement officials who claimed that a task force investigating the case believed that Gray’s death warranted a manslaughter charge at the most. One officer, Caesar Goodson Jr., who drove Gray’s van, was charged with second-degree depraved-heart murder.
The task force investigators were also expecting the Maryland state medical examiner to rule Gray’s death something less than a homicide, which was the final determination of Mosby’s investigation.