The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • T12

She received a scholarship to Tuskegee University, where she met herfuture husband, who after she graduated from Boston College Law School brought her home to Reservoir Hill in Baltimore. "He points to a 20-year dilapidated shell and I looked around at the open-air drug market," Mosby says. "He says, 'It's about investing, about realizing the potential of our Marilyn joined the States Attorney's Office while Nick, an electrical engineer, who works for Verizon and thenranfor and won the city council seat held for years by Belinda Conaway. In this way the Mosbys have established themselves as an up-and-coming power couple. Mosby says her five years as an assistant prosecutor (she left in 20 11 to work for an insurance company) trumps Bernstein's four in office and 2 5-plus as a trial lawyer.

"When you look at my experience, I have more experience than the incumbent," she says, touting her management experience as supervisor of the early resolution court, where she say she trained the incoming prosecutors on courtroom decorum and case management. "He was a federal prosecutor 20 years ago," she says of Bernstein. "I was day to day in court, dealing with Baltimore juries." Bernstein has not done enough to break down the culture of distrust many Baltimore citizens harbor toward law enforcement, Mosby says, citing as examples the deaths of Matthew Hersl and Tyron West. The family of Hersl, a City Hall employee who was run down by a junkie fleeing police last spring, were stunned when the driver was at first set free by police. Prosecutors eventually told the family they were going to offer a plea deal, and the family held a press conference to decry that decision.

Johnny Johnson eventually pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter and was sentenced to 11 years in prison, including 10 for Hersl's death the maximum allowed under Maryland law. Bernstein said the law was "woefully inadequate," But Mosby says Bernstein should have included Hersl's family in discussions of the case all along. Tyrone West, whom police stopped in a car on July 18, 2013, died of an apparent heart attack as police tried to subdue him after spotting cocaine in his sock. Bernstein's office investigated the police and in December declined to charge any of them criminally. Since shortly after West's death, West's family has waged a campaign against Bernstein, dogging him at public appearances and picketing his office, calling him racist.

It is a sentiment that resonates in some precincts and it's one that Bernstein has been unable to completely dispel. Bernstein says his office looks at every case where there is an allegation of impropriety or brutality by police. "We have prosecuted police officers inthe last three and a half years for the use of excessive force," he says in an interview at his office. "We have investigated some officers where we concluded that they did not exceed the objective standard of reasonableness." Mosby says she doesn't know if she would have done anything differently, "but this family waited nine months to know how their loved one was killed. MARILYN MOSBY, OUTSIDE HER OFFICE SPACE AT THE CORNER OF EUTAW PLACE AND NORTH AVENUE.

STATE OF THE STATE'S ATTORNEY RACE Mosby's hungry, vague; Bernstein's confident. Will his record undo him? MARILYN MOSBY'S CAMPAIGN OFFICE is in a seemingly otherwise vacant building at the corner of Eutaw Place and North Avenue. In the basement, past several workers making signs, back next to what looks like an abandoned commercial juice bar, she sits in a barren office firing off insults at her former boss, Baltimore City State's Attorney Gregg Bernstein and the 1 1 million he spent getting spiffy new offices at the Sun Trust building. "Victim-witness services needs to be the top which he won't admitto that may have helped of another. "We were well known in our neighborhood as being the police house," she says.

"All the kids came to our house. We had an indoor pool, in the inner city of Boston." Bused to a far-off, nearly all-white school, she felt subtly pressured to embody the African-American ideal. Although the experience was hard, "it made me who I am," she says. "I wouldn't trade it for the world." But it was the murder of her cousin 20 years ago that set her on her current course. He lived across the street, she say s.

His name was Diron. He was an artist; he wanted to go to Morehouse College. And he was in her house moments before he was shot to death. "I heard him leave the house," Mosby says. "I heard gunshots and I heard a scream.

I opened the door and saw someone running, and I saw someone lying on the street but I did not recognize it as him." The guy who shot him was looking to rob a dealer named Deon, and apparently misheard his name. Diron had a bike, nice sneakers. The shooter asked him to turn over his stuff and Diron, according to Mosby, had no idea what he was talking about, there on the block where everyone knew he was part of the cop family. The case was solved because a neighbor stepped up to testify, Mosby says. Mosby says the incident inspired her to become a prosecutor.

priority," Mosby says, sitting in a hard chair near a small table with a laptop on it. "And it's not. His top priority was getting this office space." This is how one becomes the new state's attorney, of course. You say the incumbent is out of touch and lets murderers go free. That's what Bernstein did to Pat Jessamy in 2010, winning the office from a 16-year incumbent by 1,167 votes in the Democratic primary.

Whether Mosby can do the same to Bernstein is an open question as early voting starts for the June 24 election. Though she is young, ambitious, and politically wired she's married to City Councilman Nick Mosby Marilyn Mosby displays a weak grasp of the office, and its budget. Still, Bernstein has come off as tone deaf, even as he implemented a policy change- increase the city's murder rate. Mosby cannot be written off. As of the June 13 campaign filing deadline, Mosby had spent almost $82,000 and had $42,315 still onhand.

It's small money next to Bernstein's war chest, which stood at $272,000 on that same date. But Mosby had collected some significant political endorsements, including ones from former Congressman and NAACP Director Kweisi Mf ume and union (and get-out-the-vote) powerhouses like the SEIU and AFL-CIO. Among her campaign contributors are Baltimore-born rap mogul Kevin Liles and Martin Cadogan, Governor Martin O'Malley's longtime campaign undraising chief. Mosby also has a compelling personal narrative. She grew up in Boston, the daughter of two police officers and the granddaughter 12 CITY PAPER JUNE 18, 2014 CITYPAPER.COM.