THEY KILLED FREDDIE GRAY

An examination of a system that allowed malign police officers to walk free after murdering a suspect.

As with the case of George Floyd five years later, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr. was the victim of a judicial killing. Arrested by Baltimore police officers for possessing what they called an illegal weapon, he died of injuries after being in custody for less than an hour. According to investigative reporter Barron, Baltimore city authorities conspired to cover up the facts of the case, which included Gray’s being shackled and handcuffed and then bounced around unrestrained on a “rough ride” in the back of a police van, which may have resulted in the spinal injury that led to his death. Working through the discovery file, Barron flags numerous instances of misconduct coupled with ineptitude, willful obfuscation, and sometimes-inexplicable decisions. Maryland State Attorney Marilyn Mosby, for example, initially filed charges against six Baltimore officers that specified that the supposedly illegal knife was actually legal—therefore, “the arrest wasn’t legal and so constituted assault.” Yet as the proceedings moved forward, she dropped the charge, apparently acceding to an opposing attorney’s demand that the legality of the knife be excluded. Media reports, Barron adds, tended to uncritically repeat the police account of the incident, by which “Gray caused his own death by banging his head” repeatedly against the door and walls of the van. The Baltimore Sun, “the paper of record in the Gray case,” was particularly loyal to the police account. Meanwhile, notes the author, the U.S. Department of Justice appears to have suppressed or at least not presented eyewitness accounts that indicated that excessive force before the ride began may have been the true cause of death. In the end, whether by design or indifference, Barron ably demonstrates, the system definitively failed Freddie Gray. Rabia Chaudry provides the foreword.

Complex, dense in detail, and sharply argued: a firm indictment of injustice committed on the street and in the courtroom.