The Prosecutors
Legal Briefs BONUS -- Our Interview with Baltimore State's Attorney Ivan Bates
Fri, 04 Apr 2025
This is a bonus of our recent conversation with Baltimore State Attorney Ivan Bates.Baltimore State's Attorney Ivan Bates joins the show to discuss his career, his involvement in the Freddie Gray case and the infamous Gun Trace Task Force, and his recent decisions in the Adnan Syed case.Check out our new True Crime Substack the True Crime Times at: https://t.co/26TIoM14TgGet Prosecutors Podcast Merch: https://www.bonfire.com/store/prosecutors-podcast/Join the Gallery on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/4oHFF4agcAvBhm3o/Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ProsecutorsPodFollow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/prosecutorspod/Check out our website for case resources: https://prosecutorspodcast.com/Hang out with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@prosecutorspodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Who is Ivan Bates and what is his role in Baltimore?
I'm Alice. And I'm Brett. And this is The Prosecutor's Legal Please. Welcome back to the Prosecutor's Legal Briefs. I'm your host, Alice, and I'm joined as always by my stately co-host, Brett.
Stately. It's a wonderful word. It doesn't apply to me. And I'm just going to shut up because we have such an awesome guest. No one actually wants to hear from me.
I mean, this is actually true in this instance, because what we are really excited about, I know you guys have been waiting for this. We have the famous he calls himself infamous. I'll let him do that. Ivan Bates, who is currently the state's attorney of Baltimore. You've heard his name in many contexts.
I don't know how a person of his stature is talking to lowly Brett and myself, but we are so excited to have you, Ivan. Thank you for being here.
Wow. Thank you, Alice. Thank you, Brett. First of all, I'm just honored to be here. You know, your podcast, a lot of people listen to it. I've had opportunity to listen to it. You are very intelligent. I love the way you break down the cases. I love the way that you look at it from a prosecutor's point of view. I love the way that you educate the listener.
So I want to thank you for what you two do.
Thank you so much, Ivan.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Truthfully, so we have recently discussed one of your filings. Those of you who don't know, he's obviously now the new state's attorney in Baltimore, and he filed the motion to withdraw vacature in the Adnan Syed case. But that's not all he is. You guys, this man has done it all, seen it all. We have so much to learn from him.
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Chapter 2: What motivated Ivan Bates to pursue a career in law?
Can you give us just kind of a brief overview of what drove you to become a lawyer and the path that you've been on that ultimately leads you to your current position?
You know, I definitely will. I've had a pretty unique view. My father was in the military, so I moved from location to location. I remember in eighth grade, I grew up in Hampton, Virginia, and we had a test. And on my eighth grade test, I said I wanted to be a lawyer, but they came back and said I wasn't smart enough and I should be a brick mason. So I kind of allowed that to drive who I was.
Um, I eventually went to the United States Army after high school. And I never forget when they sit in this big room, we're in the Hampton Coliseum, they said where I was going United States Army, and everybody was laughing at me. And so I was like, you know what, I'm gonna go to college one day. So I went to the United States Army, and I had a lieutenant who just finished college.
And then I had a Sergeant Major who had fought in Vietnam, been there 30 years. And I didn't understand why the Lieutenant was the one giving us the directions. And he clearly did not know where he was taking us. And I need the Sergeant Major because I felt like the Sergeant Major is going to make sure we lived. And so he said, look, you know, you're smart. You need to go to college.
After that, I think that really changed my life. I was tired of digging ditches, taking orders from everybody. I applied, I went to Howard University in Washington, DC, loved it, loved it, loved it. It gave me what I needed to go ahead and be successful. I just need to have belief in myself. Once I did that, it taught me a lot about who I was, my history, and Thurgood Marshall.
I'd heard of Thurgood Marshall. It was a blurb in my life, but Howard University made him someone that I looked up to, him and Vernon Jordan, and I wanted to be a lawyer. I went to William & Mary, College of William & Mary. I graduated. I worked and clerked out in Los Angeles for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund when all the craziness went on with OJ Simpson. I was out there that summer.
i then you know i passed the bar i was blessed passed the first time and i clerked for a judge in baltimore named david mitchell i moved to baltimore because i had an aunt who lived here was 75 and didn't have any children i wanted to go back to california to work for the naacp legal defense fund or someone but my mother asked me to come take care of my aunt i was his law clerk the state's attorney's office and the public defenders both reached out to him about giving me a job and he told me i was gonna go be a prosecutor
And so I was a state's assistant state's attorney in Baltimore City for six years. I did all types of cases. From there, I became a criminal defense attorney. I had bills in the state's attorney's office, paid peanuts. Those law school bills were pretty expensive. Those loans came to do. And I loved it. You know, I had a case where I argued with my former my former boss in front of the U.S.
Supreme Court. So in the last cases that Sandra Day O'Connor listened to, I then started my own firm, had a lot of great cases. I represented Sergeant Alicia White and Freddie Gray Matter. I also played a major role in exposing the Gun Trace Task Force and the corrupt police officers. I ran in 2018 to be the state's attorney of Baltimore City against Marilyn Mosby and I lost.
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Chapter 3: How did Ivan Bates handle the Freddie Gray case?
I told you guys that each of his experiences could be probably an entire documentary. And speaking of documentaries, you kind of glossed over one of probably the most interesting things that you had a part in, which is the Gun Trace Task Force. And this is so interesting, everything you're saying about Sergeant White, where each police officer should be treated based on the evidence.
Just because you wear a blue uniform doesn't necessarily mean there's always police misconduct. But then kind of on the 180 as well, you were instrumental in uncovering probably one of the most egregious cases of police misconduct through the Gun Trace Task Force, which I believe there's a documentary on that you all can watch. It's called I Got a Monster. I think it's like Apple TV, Amazon Prime.
I watched it. And you guys, when you start a shot with Ivan Bates, you know this is going to be a good documentary. And this was truly one of the most shocking cases that you stuck by. So I'd love to hear how this came across your desk. And I think this is a perfect example of showing how justice is blind. When there's misconduct, you call it out. When there isn't, you defend vigorously.
But tell us a little bit more about your role and how you came across the Gun Task Force and the craziness that then unfolded from there.
Yeah, you know, for those of you that may not know, I was a defense attorney for almost 20 years. And, you know, you represent the regular criminal element. But there were some that kept telling me the same thing. There was one particular officer, Wayne Jenkins, he's stealing my money. You know, it was sort of used to be like this.
Okay, you took my drugs, you took my money, now you're supposed to let me go. You're going to take my drugs and my money and you're going to charge me? So he kind of changed the quote unquote, the game. Like, you know, to be honest, Baltimore has had its fair share of corruption. And so you have clients telling you that.
And so, you know, I had a couple of rumbles of Wayne Jenkins in the past and I was beginning. He always was a step ahead of me in all those cases. We had won all the the suppression motions. It was almost like if you knew I was going to do, he was always prepared. He won a lot of cases that way.
But Wayne kind of got in trouble, had to sit on the sidelines with the previous state's attorney, Greg Bernstein. When Miss Mosby came in, she pretty much cleared him and allowed him to testify. Once he began to testify, he was in leadership position. He began to lock up a number of individuals, make these great cases.
The same time I was doing Freddie Gray's, the same time I was going to the jails to talk to individuals to see what Wayne Jenkins was doing. We had begun to get body camera footage and his unit was the test case. Well, on this one particular piece of body camera footage, I saw that they stopped my client. They pretty much looked like they planted a gun.
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Chapter 4: What was Ivan Bates' involvement in the Gun Trace Task Force?
You know, I think look, when you're I think being a black male, I look at things from a different lens sometimes. but I also think being a criminal defense attorney, I represented those communities. I go to church in those communities. I lived in a number of those communities. A lot of clients are from those communities. So I knew their family. I knew their mothers. I knew their grandmothers.
And I know the remember when I came into office, we had eight years in a row, three hundred and forty three hundred plus murders. The year before I got here was three hundred forty five murders. And so when I came into office, I said, look, if you're going to carry an illegal handgun, bring your toothbrush. See, here we have in the state of Maryland, you know.
What's called we can invoke a mandatory minimum if you're a felon and you have an illegal handgun, you can we can get five years without the possibility of parole. So for me to say that, I said that because I wanted to speak the language of my former clients to let them know if you're carrying illegal handguns, I'm sending you to jail.
Our first two years, we sent one thousand seven hundred and twenty three individuals to jail. Our murder rate dropped from 345 to 201 murders. Right now, as of today, we had 29 murders as of today in Baltimore City, where last year, this time we had 43. Now remember, that was our best year where we had 201. We're headed in the right direction.
What I know is that people, doesn't matter if you're black, white, purple, green, people do not wanna be around violence. And what we've tried to do, we've tried to go after the right people, meaning those violent repeat offenders. Look, if you're gonna perpetrate violence, oh, I will definitely give you the life sentence that you want. You ask for it, I give it to you. But I tell people,
There's no harder conversation to have than with a mother who's lost her son to gun violence. Her only son, she worked two jobs, and he graduated from high school barely, and he's out here. But what is he doing? He's dabbling, selling marijuana. These fools rob him and they kill him.
I mean, I would much rather deal with them and put them in jail for five years without the possibility of parole than give them that life sentence. Look, I'm a big believer of second chances, but I also believe that people pay a lot in taxes. People deserve to have a society and a government that works for them and that puts them first.
And so for me, you know, some of those values I think that I got from the South, some of those values my father, a lot of them gave me growing up. I just really believe that when you do have that opportunity to do right, look, I'm not supposed to be in this seat. If you look at statistics, I'm not. So since I am here, let me do right.
Let me do something because my daughter, you know, I want her to be proud of me one day. My father, I've been able to move him from the South up here. He's proud of me. Those are things that when I go into community, When I ran three years ago, I would die for anybody to know my name. So if you know my name, you're going to vote for me. Now, everywhere I go, people know my name.
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Chapter 5: How does Ivan Bates approach crime and justice in Baltimore?
Well, When I ran for state's attorney the first time against Ms. Mosby, the thing to me that was very important was that
people just didn't have an understanding a clue about the criminal justice system and the criminal justice system for the average person is a mystery they see it on television but they really didn't understand it i did feel that we owed it to everybody to really understand what the evidence was that we saw and i felt that we needed to write and make sure the record was clear i will also tell you this we did it the right way in the sense that
You know, I consulted a lawyer from AGC who was a former attorney grievance lawyer counsel. So I consulted them to make sure that we were not defaming and within the rules. But we also consulted a lawyer to make sure we weren't defaming anybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You need to understand and learn your craft. It doesn't matter if you're on the defense side, the prosecution side, learn your craft, take the opportunity. You know, you have to get in the trenches. There's no, if you're going to be a trial lawyer, there are no shortcuts. You're going to go in court. You're going to lose. but learn from your losses.
If you're a defense attorney, go to the jail and visit your clients. Spend that time. If they tell you something, look into there and file those briefs and file those motions, and they probably aren't gonna win, but still file them. If you're a prosecutor, remember your victims, understanding what they're going through. Learn your craft.
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