Maryland AG Declines to Reopen Investigation Into Thomas Rawls Death

Maryland Attorney General declines to reopen Thomas Rawls investigation

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office has announced it will not reopen a criminal investigation into the 2006 death of Thomas Rawls, citing insufficient evidence to warrant further action.

This decision follows a comprehensive review of the investigative files related to the incident, Fox Baltimore reported.

Rawls died on March 2, 2006, following restraint by officers from the Baltimore County Police Department. While the case has remained a point of contention for nearly two decades, the state’s top legal office determined that the existing information does not justify a new probe or criminal prosecution.

The Attorney General’s Office is not releasing additional details from the investigative file at this time, acting at the request of counsel for the Rawls family. The review process involved a deep dive into records from law enforcement authorities and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME).

A discrepancy in death classifications

The central tension in this case lies in how the death was originally categorized versus how modern independent reviews have interpreted it. On March 3, 2006, the OCME performed an autopsy and ruled the manner of death as “undetermined.”

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However, a state audit recently prompted independent medical examiners to re-examine the findings of the OCME. These independent experts concluded that the death of Rawls should have been classified as a “homicide.”

Despite this external clinical assessment, the OCME has not changed its original certification regarding the cause or manner of death for Rawls. This disconnect shows a gap between independent medical review and official state certification.

The decision to decline further investigation was part of a broader mandate. An executive order required an examination of 41 restraint-related deaths occurring between 2003 and 2019. In several of those instances, independent medical examiners reached the same conclusion as they did with Rawls: that deaths originally classified otherwise should have been labeled as homicides.

Maryland AG Declines to Reopen Investigation Into Thomas Rawls Death

The legal threshold for prosecution

The Maryland Attorney General’s Office is aligning its stance with a previous decision made by the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s Office, which also declined to pursue criminal charges stemming from the death. While the OAG is offering the Rawls family access to investigative materials, it maintains that the evidentiary threshold for criminal proceedings has not been met.

This case reflects a recurring challenge in oversight involving police restraint deaths. When independent audits suggest a different classification of death than the original medical examiners, the consistency of forensic reporting and the mechanisms used to hold departments accountable are unclear.

For the family of Thomas Rawls, the decision brings a formal end to the state’s review process, even as the medical classification of the death remains a subject of dispute between independent examiners and the OCME. The state's refusal to move forward demonstrates the difficulty of revisiting decades-old cases where the primary medical evidence remains unchanged despite modern scrutiny.