State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby must be grateful for the gag order that prevents her from talking about the Freddie Gray case. So far, her office has tried three of the six officers accused in Gray’s death, resulting in two acquittals and one hung jury. What a relief it must be to not face reporters after yet another rebuke. On Thursday, Officer Caesar Goodson — who drove the police transport van in which Gray suffered his fatal injury — was acquitted of all charges after a bench trial before Circuit Judge Barry Williams.

And Judge Williams didn’t merely acquit Goodson. In the verdict he handed down, he eviscerated the State’s case against Goodson and, by extension, did so to the cases yet to be tried. (Officer William Porter, the first of the six to go to trial, is scheduled to be retried after a jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict. Officer Edward Nero was acquitted in a bench trial last month.) As to every count against Goodson, Williams said the State had failed to meet its burden, citing the paucity or utter lack of incriminating evidence. Given his rationale, it’s a wonder the judge did not grant the defense’s motion for acquittal at the conclusion of the State’s case.

I predicted a year ago here on Ricochet that none of the six officers would be convicted of a single charge; that outcome is even more likely now than it was then. It remains to be seen how far Mosby will try to ride this obviously lame horse. The case against all six officers was a sham from the start, but one could argue that Goodson, who — as the driver of the van — had custody of Gray when the injury occurred, was the most culpable. With his acquittal, it must be obvious even to Mosby that there is no hope for a conviction against the officers whose role in Gray’s death was even more tangential than Goodson’s.