Over the course of Wednesday afternoon and evening, close to 80 people who were arrested Monday during Freddie Gray protests in Baltimore were released from the city's Central Booking and Intake Center. Baltimore police say that more than 200 people were taken into custody that day.
Natalie Finegar, a lawyer from the Baltimore public defender's office, said the protesters were released because they had been held for more than 48 hours without receiving charging documents or seeing a court commissioner, The Washington Post reports, and the law requires that a person who is taken into custody must stand before a court commissioner within 24 hours. "Many of them don't even know what they're charged with," Finegar said. "I am concerned that this is going to further erode the public's confidence in our criminal justice system."
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