Baltimore city state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby’s motion for a gag order in the Freddie Gray case was denied Monday because the prosecutor filed paperwork in the wrong court.
Mosby’s May 14 motion, filed in Baltimore’s circuit court, was intended to block witnesses, attorneys and police from speaking publicly about the Gray case. Six officers have been indicted on a total of 28 felony charges related to Gray’s April 12 arrest. The 25-year-old Gray died April 19. His death was ruled a homicide.
Judge Charles Peters slapped down Mosby’s motion, citing jurisdictional issues, The Baltimore Sun reported. The cases for the six officers were still on the district court’s docket when the motion was filed. The cases were only moved to the circuit court on May 21, after a grand jury indicted the officers.
It is unclear whether Mosby’s office will file a new request in circuit court.
“We’re not going to litigate this case in the media and discuss our trial strategy,” Rochelle Ritchie, a spokeswoman for Mosby’s office, told The Sun when asked whether a new motion is forthcoming.
The Daily Caller sought comment from Ritchie on what led the office to file the motion in the wrong court in the first place. She again declined to “litigate the case in the media” or discuss trial strategy.
The faulty filing is not the state’s attorney’s office’s first procedural misstep.
After Mosby first announced charges against the six cops May 1, charging documents listed the wrong addresses for two of the officers, Alicia White and Brian Rice. The charging documents listed individuals who shared the same first and last names with the two officers. The two victims of mistaken identity were hounded for a couple of days by aggressive reporters.
The Baltimore County sheriff’s office deferred questions at the time to Mosby’s office.
Missteps like that, as well as Mosby’s controversial public statements about the case, has generated a flurry of criticism. Page Croyder, a former prosecutor in the Baltimore city state’s attorney’s office, has publicly accused Mosby of using biased rhetoric when addressing the case. She has also claimed Mosby overcharged the six officers and that she lacks the proper experience to try the case.
This post has been updated.