One of the pigs responsible for Freddie Gray's death was acquitted on all charges by a "Black" judge

Options
stringer bell
stringer bell Members Posts: 26,212 ✭✭✭✭✭
in For The Grown & Sexy
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/us/baltimore-officer-edward-nero-freddie-gray-court-verdict.html?_r=0
Officer Is Acquitted of All Charges in Freddie Gray Case

BALTIMORE — A police officer was acquitted of all charges on Monday in the arrest of Freddie Gray, a black man who later died of injuries sustained in police custody. The verdict is likely to fuel renewed debate over the way the police patrol poor and minority neighborhoods.

The officer, Edward M. Nero, sat as Circuit Judge Barry G. Williams, who was the sole decider in the case, read his decision in the noiseless cavern of Courtroom 234.

Officer Nero, who was implicated not in the death of Mr. Gray but in the opening moments of his arrest, was found not guilty of second-degree assault, two counts of misconduct and of reckless endangerment.

The verdict, the first in any of the six officers implicated, comes a little more than a year after Mr. Gray died in April 2015 of a functionally severed spinal cord that he sustained while in police custody. Mr. Gray’s death embroiled parts of Baltimore, which has a history of tension between the police and its residents, in violent protest and became an inexorable piece of the nation’s wrenching discussion of the use of force by officers, particularly against minorities.

Many demonstrators felt vindicated when the city’s top prosecutor, Marilyn J. Mosby, announced charges against the officers involved in the encounter with Mr. Gray on a sunny April morning in the city’s blighted Sandtown neighborhood. But the legal process has turned slowly. Judge Williams granted separate trials for each officer, but the first trial, against Officer William G. Porter, ended with a mistrial in December, catalyzing months of legal delays.

The trial of Officer Nero, 30, shifted the focus from the injuries that killed Mr. Gray, which was a crucial point in Officer Porter’s trial, to the opening moments of his arrest. It was never going to be the highest-profile prosecution in the case related to Mr. Gray; that will be Caesar R. Goodson Jr., the driver of the police wagon in which Mr. Gray is believed to have broken his neck. But, in a city that is already the subject of a federal civil rights investigation into whether officers use excessive force and discriminatory policing, Officer Nero’s trial renewed questions about when an officer can stop a private citizen and what an officer is allowed to do.

“I would say the trial has endangered a wider conversation about how police operate in poor communities, particularly poor communities of color that raises critical issues about society,” said David Jaros, a law professor at the University of Baltimore.

During the weeklong proceeding, prosecutors and defense lawyers agreed that the officers had the right to stop Mr. Gray, who had fled them in a high-crime area for no apparent reason. But prosecutors said Officer Nero and another officer, Garrett E. Miller, exceeded their authority by handcuffing, moving and searching Mr. Gray without first questioning and frisking him, as the law requires. Any physical contact they made with him while doing so, prosecutors argued, amounted to second-degree assault. Officer Nero was also charged with misconduct related to those actions.

“That’s what happens in the city all the time. People get jacked up in the city all the time,” Janice Bledsoe, a deputy state’s attorney, said during her closing argument on Thursday.

“That’s a separate issue,” answered Judge Williams, who repeatedly pressed prosecutors on whether they believed that every arrest made without probable cause amounted to a crime.

A lawyer for Officer Nero, Marc Zayon, said that the apprehension of Mr. Gray was legal, and that, even if it wasn’t: “Wrong or right isn’t the standard. The standard is, were they so wrong that it was unreasonable?” Mr. Zayon said.

Defense lawyers had watched the procedures play out with awe, since it is usually they, not the prosecution, who raise issues of illegal search and seizure in court. What is more, they said, illegal stops rarely result in criminal charges.

“If you’re going to go back and charge every police officer whose arrest was determined to be illegal with assault, or every search that’s deemed to be absent probable cause, you’re going to indict the entire police force,” said Warren Brown, a defense lawyer who has been watching the case.

Officer Nero was also charged with reckless endangerment and another count of misconduct for not restraining Mr. Gray with a seatbelt when he and other officers placed him in a transport wagon.

“When you have custody of someone, you have a duty to keep them safe,” Michael Schatzow, the chief deputy state’s attorney, told Judge Williams.

Mr. Zayon said it was the responsibility of the van driver, not Officer Nero, to secure Mr. Gray with a seatbelt, and that his client had not knowingly violated police procedure or the law.

“This is an officer with two years on the force,” Mr. Zayon said. “He was a baby, still learning with regard to a lot of this.”

· Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
«13

Comments

Categories