In Marilyn Mosby’s Baltimore, Repeat Criminals Go Free to Kill

A majority of the city’s murders since 2015 were committed by suspects who should have been in prison.

By Sean Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy is a visiting fellow at the Maryland Public Institute and author of the recent study “Baltimore’s Preventable Murders: The Role of Prior Convictions and Sentencing in Future Homicides.” Excerpts:

"Using a database of homicide defendants provided by the transparency nonprofit Baltimore Witness, I analyzed the criminal histories of 110 suspects charged with homicide in Baltimore between January 2019 and July 2020. My analysis indicates that the majority of the city’s murders didn’t have to happen.

Ninety of the defendants whose histories I examined had previously been convicted of an offense carrying a sentence of three or more years in prison. Most didn’t serve anywhere near that time. They were back on the street when the homicides they are charged with were committed, but they should have been behind bars.

More than half (77) of the 110 homicide defendants whose cases I examined were previously convicted of serious crimes under Ms. Mosby. At least 61 of those 77 were convicted of an offense whose eligible jail term, if served in full, would have made it impossible for them to commit their alleged homicides.

Ms. Mosby, who decries mass incarceration and decriminalized a slew of quality-of-life crimes by fiat in 2020, makes frequent use of a loophole in state sentencing rules to keep criminals out of prison. Under a “binding plea agreement,” Maryland prosecutors can deem a sentence “compliant” if it falls short of the guidelines range, or even the statutory mandatory minimum term. All that needs to happen is for the prosecutor and defense counsel to agree to the plea before taking it to the judge.

At that point, the judge retains veto power only. If the judge accepts the defendant’s guilty plea, the agreed-on sentence can’t be altered. By dropping charges that carry hefty prison sentences, prosecutors like Ms. Mosby can cut offenders loose without running afoul of the rules at all."