Baltimore State’s Attorney Mosby faces lawsuit over public records denials

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A pair of legal advocacy groups is suing Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby over her office’s repeated denials of public records requests related to police misconduct.

The lawsuit, brought by the activist legal group Baltimore Action Legal Team and a transparency organization called Open Justice Baltimore, claims that Mosby’s office has abused Maryland’s Public Information Act in order to evade legitimate requests for public records.

“The (State’s Attorney’s Office) has willfully ignored requests by the plaintiffs and actively obstructed the plaintiffs’ seeking records of the SAO’s business,” BALT’s legal director, Matt Zernhelt, wrote in the complaint.

“Defendants have created artificial reasoning and faulty fees to delay the disclosure of records due.”

The lawsuit is the latest action that BALT and Open Justice Baltimore have brought in an effort to pry loose public records related to the city’s legal system.

It also goes a step further than previous lawsuits by naming Mosby and two staff members who handled the PIA requests in both their official and personal capacities.

“Public actors are not following the law,” Zernhelt said in an interview. “It’s their duty and responsibility to provide transparency and full public accountability. These records belong to the community and in the community.”

A spokesperson for the State’s Attorney’s Office did not offer a comment after a reporter provided a copy of the complaint. The two staff members who are named in the lawsuit, Chief Counsel Erin Murphy and Assistant State’s Attorney Reagan Greenberg, did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment.

BALT’s lawsuit centers on an April PIA request for “investigatory files of alleged criminal conduct of officers of the Baltimore Police Department that were closed in 2020,” according to the lawsuit. The group had previously requested the same records from 2019 and received a cost estimate and a precise number of work hours required to locate the records, the complaint claims.

But in response to the request for 2020 records, the State’s Attorney’s Office claimed it could not fill the request because its files were not organized in a manner that would make the records accessible without thousands of hours of work.

After BALT suggested ways for the office to locate the correct records, the State’s Attorney’s Office identified 84 files and told BALT the request would cost $23,625 to fill, according to the complaint.

The office also declined a fee-waiver request from BALT and Open Justice Baltimore, citing the groups’ funding sources and ability to solicit donations. The denial is included as an attachment to BALT’s complaint.

The office acknowledged that the records “may serve some public interest,” which is one factor to be considered in fee-waiver requests for public records, but also said:

“…we do not believe that the blanket and categorical disclosure of all investigatory files pertaining to Baltimore City Police Officers, regardless of the conclusion and disposition of such investigations, would contribute in a meaningful way, let alone significantly, to the public’s understanding of the operations and activities of the State’s Attorney’s Office.”

BALT ultimately collected the funds to pay for the records, but was then told only three files would be provided, according to the complaint. The office said it would not disclose the files in cases that did not result in charges because they were attorney work product, BALT wrote.

BALT also claims in the complaint that it received inadequate or incomplete responses to several other PIA requests during the same time period, including one request for a detailed, line-item budget for the office.

The suit claims that the State’s Attorney’s Office “returned false, frivolous, fraudulent and otherwise fictitious exemptions and privileges to withhold records and deny disclosure of records, in violation of the PIA.”

It seeks statutory damages for violations of Maryland’s public records law and punitive damages against Mosby, Murphy and Greenberg in their personal capacity for violations of the PIA.

BALT recently saw a legal victory in another lawsuit when Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals found that the State’s Attorney’s Office had improperly failed to disclose a list of police officers with credibility issues that could affect their ability to testify. The appeals court also found that the office’s denials of BALT’s fee-waiver requests was arbitrary and capricious.

BALT sued in that case after Mosby’s office denied a request for the list on the grounds that it contained personnel records and attorney work-product.

After the appeals court found that the list was disclosable, Mosby released an abbreviated list of 90 police officers her office will not call to testify, though she had previously said that she had a list of more than 300 officers with credibility problems.

Her office said that the two lists are distinct and has not released the larger list, which it said includes claims against officers that may not have been substantiated.

Zernhelt called the release of the shorter list “performative transparency.”

The new lawsuit is docketed in Baltimore City Circuit Court at 24-C-21-004533.