Baltimore DA defends flipping off supporter of Keith Davis Jr.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby (D) on Thursday defended her actions in a video that showed her raising her middle finger to a constituent, The Baltimore Sun reported. 

A video surfaced on Twitter on Wednesday showing a male constituent riding his bike and recording Mosby at a waterfront bar. He then shouts at Mosby “Free Keith Davis Jr.” and Mosby looks at the man and flips him off. 

But this isn’t personal?A current Baltimore City State’s Attorney gave the middle finger to a constituent simply because he said #FreeKeithDavisJr this is truly i appropriate and further proof we should be demanding these charges against Keith be dropped pic.twitter.com/MtvupYhNga

— #FreeKeithDavisJr (@50ShadesofKellz) May 19, 2021

The video gained some backlash after Mosby’s office first responded to the tweet by denying that she flipped off the constituent and saying she instead gave him a thumbs up.

This is clearly a thumb guys – enough already. Let’s move on. pic.twitter.com/VQBMwII3SN

— Baltimore SAO (@BaltimoreSAO) May 20, 2021

On Thursday, a tweet was posted showing Mosby did in fact shoot a middle finger to the man in the clip. 

A source obtained the original video of Mosby’s gesture (not the social media upload). They took screenshots of the key moments in questions (their annotations). It would appear pretty clearly here that a middle finger was raised before the thumb shot… https://t.co/SrOBV2s8fU pic.twitter.com/lCiXB5XmYu

— Justine Barron (@jewstein3000) May 20, 2021

Sean Gearhart, the man who filmed Mosby, said in a Friday statement to The Hill that it’s “extremely concerning” that Mosby at first denied her actions.

“The fact that her office initially lied about the incident, then admitted it while blatantly misrepresenting the facts is much worse than the actual gesture, and this calls into question her credibility,” Gearhart said.

Mosby told the Sun that the reason she flipped off Gearhart was because she felt he was threatening her. 

“Last night while I was out with work colleagues, an unmasked male stranger aggressively biked towards me and two female friends and shouted into my face,” Mosby said in a statement to the Sun. “As he biked off, I responded in the way any normal woman would to a threatening strange man.” 

Keith Davis Jr., who is serving a 50-year prison sentence, was granted a new trial last week — his fifth — in a 2015 murder case. He was convicted of killing a Pimlico security guard, Kevin Jones, in June 2015, just weeks after protests swept the city over Freddie Gray’s death in police custody, according to the Sun.

His first and third trials ended in hung juries. His second resulted in a conviction that was later overturned and a jury in his fourth and latest trial convicted him as well. Supporters of Davis, who are growing in number, have been pressing Mosby to forego a fifth murder trial and allow Davis to be released.

Davis’s wife, Kelly Davis, told The Hill that the video made her question Mosby’s reputation as a “progressive prosecutor.”

“So explain this to me, a progressive prosecutor in Baltimore City is following the trend of a white southern district attorney with a reputation of being racist, is that what we’re doing. It doesn’t make sense,” Kelly Davis said. 

She added Mosby cleared officers who shot Davis as they pursued him for an unrelated crime, of which he was later acquitted, and prosecuted him for murder instead. Davis shared with The Hill what she said are now-deleted tweets of Mosby celebrating Davis Jr.’s conviction in 2017. 

Davis added what Mosby is doing with her husband’s case is “egregious” and that she feels Mosby has to be held accountable.

“We want representation so bad that we’re willing to sacrifice the most vulnerable, which is Keith and myself and my children, I have to handle that representation,” she said.  

—Updated Friday at 7:50 p.m.