The Maryland Appeals Court has stepped in to halt the trial against Officer Caesar Goodson on the day jury selection was scheduled to begin.   In an earlier appellate court ruling the forced testimony of accused police officer William Porter was blocked.  The State’s cases are falling apart due to inept legal application and ideological motives to prosecute.

Baltimore six 2

Baltimore State Attorney Marilyn Mosby is now claiming without Porter’s testimony her cases against both Caesar Goodson and Alicia White will not stand:

[…] not being able to call Porter as a witness would “result in irreparable harm to the People of Maryland by effectively gutting their government’s prosecution” of two of the officers. (link)

On its face this is an absolutely absurd position. 

The case against William Porter ended in a mistrial, but even if the case against Porter had resulted in a successful conviction – Porter would still have the ability to evoke his fifth amendment right not to testify while his appeal was outstanding.  Mosby should have never even contemplated the ability to use Porter as a witness against any officer.

Marilyn Mosby and the Baltimore prosecutors office are so blinded by politics they are showing a complete disconnect from law and/or the ability to legally prosecute their case.

Judge Nelson 4Readers might remember the trial of George Zimmerman, a case with significant legal parallels to the malicious Baltimore Six prosecution in Baltimore.  Zimmerman’s defense team won three easy appeals court decisions against rulings of Orlando Judge Debra Nelson during trial.  In addition there were at least two more easy-to-win appeals the defense  never even filed because the prosecution case simply collapsed.

In the 2013 Zimmerman trial, similar to Baltimore Judge Barry Williams, Judge Nelson became ideologically disconnected from legal forethought.  Nelson even demanded in open court, during the trial -before the prosecution team had finished their presentation- that George Zimmerman go on record publicly stating if he was going to take the stand in his own defense.  Any appeals court in the country would have thrown out any subsequent negative outcome and allowed a retrial, on that basis alone.

This is what happens when severely malicious political prosecutions need to be propped up by sympathetic (to the prosecution) and activist judges.

Back to Baltimore – Last week Judge Barry Williams mandated that Officer William Porter, who has a re-trail date pending in July, forcibly testify against the other officers.  Essentially denying Porter his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination.   This outlandish judicial ruling is what the Maryland appellate court immediately blocked.

Judge Williams was conducting his court in a similar fashion to Judge Nelson in Florida.  Both activist judges trying to save the fraudulent prosecutorial cases against the accused, and bail out the states’ weak case and lack of legal reasoning.

judge barry williamsmosby you mad bro

Yesterday, just before jury selection was set to begin, the Maryland appeals court, obviously understanding the snowball effect of what was happening, blocked the trial of Goodson from continuing.

By the time Mosby presented her own request to delay the trial, because she now views the case as impossible to continue without Porter’s testimony, the entire issue became moot; recognized as such by Judge Barry Williams.

This halt effectively stops all prosecutions from going forward until the underlying legal issues surrounding Porter’s constitutional rights are clarified.  This process will likely take several months; and as Mosby has now admitted – if the state loses their appeal, they will simultaneously lose the case(s) against Officer Goodson and Officer White.

In short, without Porter, the state is claiming the entire construct of their prosecution map collapses.  Millions spent, tens of thousands of legal hours wasted, multiple court dockets for other cases delayed, and for what? Nothing.

This is exactly what happens when political cases run into the rules of the judiciary.

[…]  Prosecutors and the officers’ defense attorneys are forbidden from discussing the case because of a gag order imposed by Williams.

Williams — who is presiding over the trials of all six officers — briefly took the bench Monday morning to note the stay by the appeals court and to place Goodson’s trial in recess.

Williams noted the prosecution’s request for a continuance but said that the request was “moot,” given the stay ordered by the appeals court. Goodson’s attorneys had objected to a continuance, asking for his trial to go forward this week, Williams said.  (link)

marilyn mosby 6

*Note* The cases against officers’ Rice, Nero and Miller are even weaker.

Share