The Sun's Don Markus is reporting that a Howard County Circuit Court jury rejected a civil lawsuit against six Baltimore police officers brought by the mother of a 7-year-old boy arrested for illegally riding a dirt bike and who was later handcuffed to a bench at police headquarters.

Judge Diane Leasure sent the case to the jury Thursday morning after determining that two of the officers acted unlawfully in arresting the boy because they didn’t witness the incident. Nonetheless, Lakisha Dinkins’ suit for more than $700,000 in compensatory damages was soundly denied. The jury said the family did not deserve any money.

Check tomorrow's Sun for more details.  Scratch that - online now,

UPDATE: With Leasure determining that two of the officers acted unlawfully, Marvin "Doc" Cheatham, president of the Baltimore chapter of the NAACP, is asking what will happen to the officers. In an email to the Mayor and City Council, Cheatham said, "We cannot and must not just go on as though nothing happened or go on with business as usual. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

I'm checking with the police department, but I believe that whatever punishment the officers were going to receive was likely long ago meted out. When officers are charged criminally, Internal Affairs waits until those charges have been adjudicated before moving forward with internal discipline. But since these officers were only sued in civil court, Internal Affairs did not have to wait and likely has closed the three-year-old case. All of the officers continue to work for the police department, though some have changed assignments. The two officers found culpable have moved on to detective and operations work.

UPDATE NO. 2: As I suspected, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi tells me that the officers were cleared of wrongdoing by internal affairs years ago.