Racist policing in Maryland: 41 deaths in police custody reclassified as homicides

May 30, 2025 Lev Koufax

Justiceformarlynbarnes

Nearly two weeks ago, Maryland Governor Wes Moore and Attorney General Anthony Brown announced that a Towson University audit reclassified 41 deaths in police custody as homicides. The audit focused on the years 2003-2019, a period that aligns with the tenure of notorious racist medical examiner, David Fowler, who was trained in apartheid South Africa. 

All 41 cases were initially classified by Fowler as “undetermined, accidental, or natural” during his tenure as Maryland’s Chief Medical Examiner. The murders, finally being called murders, include high-profile cases such as Anton Black and Tyrone West. In both cases, the police brutally assaulted and killed a young Black man, and in both cases, David Fowler found the deaths to be accidental. Racism as a system could not function without a whole system of bureaucrats like Fowler who silence the community and rubber stamp racist murder. 

Fowler’s heinous testimony in the trial of Derek Chauvin stirred public outrage when he testified under oath that George Floyd died from a heart attack. According to Fowler, the police officer’s knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly 10 minutes was merely coincidental. Due to public pressure, the State of Maryland ordered the audit after 450 medical experts published a letter demanding a full review of Fowler’s tenure. 

Even as Governor Moore and AG Brown reflected on the audit results as “concerning,” there was no announcement of charges against the perpetrators of the recently converted murders. All of these killings are documented in nauseating detail. The sad fact is that – Fowler, Chauvin, the Maryland State Attorney – are all cogs in a larger racist machine. They work to uphold and enforce modern Jim Crow. 

Frankly, the working class is tired of hearing about audits, investigations and reviews. All this report did was confirm a fraction of what the entire city of Baltimore has known for years: The police and the medical examiner have coordinated to protect brutal, racist cops. 

Justice for Marlyn Barnes

Many people died at the hands of the racist justice system who weren’t on that list. For example, Marlyn Barnes was one of the 1,300 initial cases that Towson investigated but was not included in the cases officially reopened. Marlyn Barnes died under suspicious circumstances in the Harford County jail in Bel Air, Maryland, in 2019. It was Fowler’s Medical Examiner administration that scuttled Barnes’ mother’s efforts to gain information about his death. Even to this day, Marlyn’s mother Marilyn doesn’t know the whole story. This is the sort of racist injustice enacted upon the Black community in Maryland and across the United States every day tenfold. 

There is no better argument for the need for a socialist revolution than the horrendous police terror regime known as the U.S. criminal justice system. While Fowler’s fall from grace and the reclassification of some of the murders is a positive step – they are also indicative of the limits of justice under capitalism. Ultimately, capitalist bureaucracy isn’t designed to genuinely assist working people, but to frustrate their efforts while maintaining a veneer of progress. 

Anton Black, Marlyn Barnes, Tyrone West, Korynne Gaines, all prisoners, and all those who have suffered from racist police brutality deserve legitimate justice. What is really needed is not just a full people’s prosecution of racist killer cops, but also complete community control of the police. 

Please see Struggle-La Lucha’s previous coverage of David Fowler, Marlyn Barnes, and the prisoner and police terror struggle more broadly: 

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