Vogue Profiles Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore's Badass Lawyer With a Mission

Maryland state’s attorney Marilyn J. Mosby was a shock to the Black Lives Matter movement when on May 1 she promised Baltimore’s rioters justice in the death of Freddie Gray. Now, she’s an It Girl who’s attracted the admiration of celebrities like Prince and Anna Wintour.

When Prince performed his first concert in Baltimore in 14 years, he invited her on stage. Maryland congressman Elijah Cummings publicly thanked God for her service, Marvel’s newest director Ava Duvernay tweeted that someone should do a documentary about her and now she’s been profiled in Vogue, which Kanye had to beg for.

She’s also one tough lawyer with an 80 percent conviction rate.

“Fuck you, Mrs. Mosby,” one gang member said in the courtroom after his guilty verdict earlier this year. “I just smiled,” Mosby recalls.

As the attorney prosecuting the six officers charged in Gray’s death, Mosby says she’s just facilitating justice.

“I don’t think I felt the weight of the case stepping up to that podium,” she tells me as we sit down for dinner at her favorite café in Baltimore’s Harbor East. “I was thinking, I’m doing the right thing. That’s what I’m here for.”

However for people watching her city’s unrest, Mosby’s focus and action toward ending police misconduct and brutality was inspiring—even though she’s just doing her job. She’s conducted a swift investigation and the officers were indicted in May, the group pled not guilty in June and a trial date has been set. Her timeline alone further shames the miscarriage of justice surrounding Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri.

But Mosby says she’s not looking for fame or even a future in politics. As the child of a family filled with good cops, she just wants to mend the broken relationship between the police and the citizens of Baltimore. With goals like that, it’s hard not to imagine her as mayor of Baltimore or governor of Maryland, just flying around delivering justice.