Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, who has tried to stop the lawyers for the policemen accused in the death of Freddie Gray from speaking to the media, has posed for the cover of Vogue magazine.

Ms. Mosby sat for the famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, whose photos accompany the 2,000-word article on the prosecutor. To call this a double standard, as the defense lawyers are doing, is to state the obvious.

I can imagine that a spread in Vogue and a session with Ms. Leibovitz, an artist of undoubted stature, would be tempting to an ambitious and attractive young prosecutor.

But couldn't she have waited? The Gray case is of paramount importance; we want justice for Freddie Gray, who died in police custody, and for the police, whose responsibility is as yet not known to the public. It is crucial to find out how Freddie Gray died, and that, not a session for Vogue, should be at the top of Ms. Mosby's to do list. Could this be a case of misplaced priorities?

The Daily Mail reports:

It seems clear that she has higher ambitions. I have heard from many people that currently work for her that all of her decisions are based on what promotes her.

'The prosecutor should be the person who wants to stay out of the spotlight. Their job is to be low key and to give their other prosecutors the chance to do their job properly.

'To make public, political statements then expect the defense not to respond is unfair, that's not how the rules work. It's absurd. 

'The beauty of the American justice system is that it's supposed to be open and free. Everyone can know what the evidence is and that's what is supposed to engender trust in the eventual verdict.'

Celebrity lawyer Joe Tacopina told Daily Mail Online he was 'shocked' to see the Mosby piece in Vogue.

'It reeks of lack of self-aggrandizing,' he said. 'She's a prosecutor in a very serious, very serious, tragic case and she's making it all about her. She's making herself a celebrity out of a tragedy.

'It's not about her, it's not about the defense lawyers: it's about what happened that day in that city.

Ms. Mosby should also know that the highly-politicized Vogue isn't always good a t picking winners.

In 2012, Joan Juliet Buck wrote a fawning profile of Asma al-Assad, the wife of the Syrian dictator ("Rose of the Desert," now strangely not available online), who, alas for Ms. Buck (and many, many other more seriously injured victims), has been revealed to be a blood-soaked dictator.

It was a near-career ender for Buck, and I predict that, while this isn't as much of a misstep, being on the cover of Vogue is going to prove a negative overall for Ms. Mosby.

Ultimately, ever how pleasant being flattered by the glitterati is, how she acquits herself in the Freddie Gray case is more important than being in Vogue.

It's too late to discreetly advise Ms. Mosby to wait for the verdict–and I don't mean the fashion verdict.