Marilyn Mosby takes a selfie with an admirer Wednesday after she took part in a panel on police misconduct and reform during the Congressional Black Caucus conference in Washington. (Photo by Nicole Pilsbury/Maryland Matters)
Former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, in what may have been one of her first public appearances since getting off home detention, talked about the need for police reform and made her own case to an appreciative audience Wednesday in Washington.
Mosby was part of a panel of lawmakers, lawyers and advocates at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation conference who talked about flaws with public safety in America and envisioned a better future.
The audience was generally receptive to the panel’s arguments that despite some improvements, the criminal justice system and policing in America still has room for improvement. But they were especially enthusiastic about Mosby, who was convicted on federal charges that she says were brought because she pursued convictions of Baltimore police officers.
Audience members chimed in with a “That’s right!” or “Yeah!” as Mosby answered panel questions, and the end of each of her answers was met with an eruption of applause and cheers. Peoplel swarmed around her as the panel concluded, eager to snap a picture with or have a chat with the former attorney.
Mosby said she was not surprised to be invited to speak on the panel, saying in a brief interview afterwards that, “There was a lot of change enacted as a direct result of what happened in Baltimore City.”
“Baltimore was at the forefront of this progressive movement,” she said.
The panel discussed the nationwide protests and reform efforts that followed the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore — a crisis Mosby came face-to-face with as the city’s top prosecutor.
The two high-profile deaths in police custody sparked national conversations about police accountability.
“Both cities remind us that public safety is not just about officers on patrol or prosecutions in the courtroom, but about trust, community and a shared belief that every person deserves equal justice under the law,” said Rep. Wesley Bell (D-Mo.), the panel moderator.
Gray’s death was four months into Mosby’s term in office. She and her team worked to charge the officers involved in Gray’s death and the U.S. Justice Department exposed the police department’s discriminatory practices — leading to nationwide reform, Mosby said at the panel. Those reforms included things like body cameras, de-escalation policies and dashboard cameras, she said.
Mosby said that prosecutors were not prosecuting police, and there was a lack of accountability in America at the time. She got death threats and became a “target of the same system I represented” following the prosecution of the officers, she said on the panel.
Bell also described Mosby as a target while asking a question about how prosecuting cases can change public safety and justice perspectives.
Mosby is on three years of supervised release — with one of those being the year of home confinement that concluded in June 2025 — for perjury convictions related to the purchase of two Florida homes.
She said the federal government was not able to find anything after interrogating her neighbors, family, friends, hairdresser and her children’s dance instructor.
“I had no idea that they could come back and say that I am now going to be the target of a criminal investigation for a statute that has never been legally used against anyone else in this country up to this day, and for a vague statute that has never been legally defined by neither Congress nor the IRS,” Mosby said during the panel discussion.
Former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)
Jason Armstrong, a retired Ferguson police chief who was appointed five years after Brown’s death, spoke on the panel about seeing the payoff and community impact from working to create a “culture of accountability.”
“Like Mrs. Mosby said, the sacrifices that I’m having to put forth in this are worth something,” he said.
Panelist Justin Hansford, a Howard University law professor and the director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center, also referenced Mosby in one of his answers, emphasizing her point that “the justice system isn’t just.”
Mosby said that the federal government opened an investigation on her two months after publishing this Washington Post op-ed that criticized President Donald Trump’s decision and threats to send federal law enforcement officers to cities around the country in July 2020.
“They did it because they wanted to get me out of office, and they were successful,” she said. “Justice is always worth the price paid for its pursuit. I would not do anything different.”
