Marilyn Mosby, the country’s youngest chief prosecutor, is heading a case that has sparked nationwide protests and riots in her fourth month on the job. On Friday, Mosby announced criminal charges for six officers in Freddie Gray’s death.
Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced sweeping criminal charges against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray on Friday.
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On Thursday, Baltimore police handed over to Mosby the confidential details of how the 25-year-old Gray died after sustaining a fatal injury in police custody, tasking her with the momentous decision of whether to criminally charge the officers in a case that has sparked riots in Baltimore and protests across the country.
In a press conference on Friday, Mosby said that Gray's death was ruled a homicide and that officers denied Gray medical assistance despite his requests and "deteriorating medical condition."
At 35, Mosby became the nation's youngest top prosecutor in any major U.S. city when she was elected to office this January.
Mosby, who said a lot of people thought she was "too young, too inexperienced" to run for state's attorney, defeated the incumbent, Gregg L. Bernstein. She began her career as a legal department intern for an insurance company in 2001 where she was hired as lead counsel in 2011.
Mosby comes from five generations of police officers; her grandfather was one of the first African American cops in Massachusetts.
Her passion for criminal justice stemmed from a personal, tragic incident when she was 14 years old. In a 2013 radio interview on Let's Talk Business, Mosby said that her 17-year-old cousin, whom she was very close to, was killed in front of her house after he was mistaken for a drug dealer.
"If it wasn't for the testimony of a witness, who actually observed the killer fleeing, he testified in court, cooperated with the police, my cousin's killer would have gotten away," Mosby said. "For me that was my first introduction at a very early age to the criminal justice system."
She said that she was inspired to become a prosecutor after realizing "there was a lot of inequities in the criminal justice system that needs to be reformed."
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1zkF23E
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