Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby is just 35, making her one of the country's youngest prosecutors, and she has been on the job for less than four months.
These facts make it even more remarkable that she brought charges against six Baltimore police officers for their roles in the death of Freddie Gray.
Prosecutors examining police-involved deaths of black men in other cities have failed to persuade grand juries to make indictments. For example, no charges were brought against the officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri or the officer who choked Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York.
There has been a lot of press devoted to what makes Mosby different. She says she comes from five generations of police officers. Her mother, father uncles and grandfather were police.
And when she announced the indictments Friday, she was careful to praise the efforts of Baltimore's police force: "To the rank and file of the Baltimore City Police: These accusations are not an indictment of the entire force. Thank you for your courage."
Yet, Mosby ran for the office of state prosecutor last fall on a pledge that she would be aggressive on police conduct. She beat the incumbent prosecutor, Gregg Bernstein, in the democratic primary and went on to win the office handily against an independent candidate.
Mosby knows first hand about street violence. When she was growing up in Boston, a 17-year old cousin was killed outside her home after being mistaken for a drug dealer.
Mosby started working in the Baltimore City state's attorney's office after she graduated from Boston College Law School. She served first as assistant state's attorney and then prosecuted some of the worst felonies in Maryland in the general trial division.
She left to go work for an insurance company for three years before coming back to run for state's attorney.
She is married to Baltimore City Councilman Nick Mosby, who, himself, issued a plea for peace during the protests earlier this week and they live on the edge of the neighborhood where the protests were earlier this week with two daughters.
