Could One Officer Have Prevented Freddie Gray's Death?

BALTIMORE, MD — Deputy State’s Attorney Janice Bledsoe painted a picture of Officer William Porter as someone who could have saved the life of 25-year-old Freddie Gray with the click of a seatbelt or the push of a button.

“Is two, three, four seconds worth a human life?” Bledsoe said of how long it would have taken the Baltimore Police officer to fasten a seatbelt onto Gray or summon a medic using the button on his police vest.

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The 26-year-old policeman had contact with Gray on Druid Hill Avenue at Dolphin Street at 8:59 a.m. on April 12 after a van driver asked for assistance with a detainee. Porter said he helped Gray from the van floor to a bench.

When the police van’s “door shut on Freddie Gray, that wagon became his casket on wheels,” Bledsoe said.

Prosecutors allege Gray died from a spinal injury as a result of not being secured in the police wagon and argued that had Porter buckled him in, the injury may not have occurred.

Porter is charged with manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office in connection with the detainment of Gray, who died in police custody April 19.

Following Gray’s funeral in late April, there were riots in parts of the city, drawing the National Guard to help quell the unrest.

Days after the riots, State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced charges against six officers involved in Gray’s detainment, ranging from misconduct in office to murder. Porter is the first officer to stand trial.

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Officer Porter’s attorney said that the state did not provide enough evidence to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt and said that prosecutors were appealing to emotion rather than reason in the case.

“There’s an absence of information,” attorney Joseph Murtha said. “There’s lots of supposition. There’s no evidence. It’s astonishing and it’s scary.”

Gray was taken into custody at 8:42 a.m. and put on a van that made several stops including one to pick up another detainee. At 9:24 a.m. when he arrived at the western district, Gray was reportedly not breathing.

There was no camera inside the van, and there was conflicting information from medical experts who testified about when Gray may have become injured.

Judge Barry Williams instructed the jury that its job was to evaluate the evidence and find the facts.

“You are not required to accept any expert’s opinion,” Williams said.

The jury was told to consider Porter’s conduct from the perspective of a reasonable police officer, not as a civilian.

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Asking that jurors look at the officer through the context of evidence and the law, Murtha flipped through several large sheets of paper facing the jury, with their instructions written on them.

“I understand there is this need...to hold somebody responsible for the death of Freddie Gray,” Murtha said. ”The state is asking you to make a decision based on speculation and conjecture....They want you to be emotionally disturbed and upset about the injuries that occurred, but Officer Porter didn’t precipitate that.”

He reminded jurors that they were to consider what a reasonable police officer would do in the circumstance.

Murtha said the state relied upon emotion in its case, especially fear, which he said was an acronym for “false evidence appearing real.”

Said Murtha to the jury: “You‘re fact finders. The state is asking you to insert information into the blanks that exist.”

The state came back with a rebuttal that there was a basic job that Porter failed to perform.

“The defendant had a duty to keep Mr. Gray safe and just didn’t care,” Chief Deputy State’s Attorney Michael Schatzow said. “That callous indifference to human life is what killed Mr. Gray.”

The deputy state’s attorney got visibly angry and banged on the top of the TV set facing jurors as he deconstructed some of the statements Porter made from the stand, such as that he and Gray had a mutual respect for one another and knew each other from the neighborhood.

“How much respect did the defendant show for Mr. Gray...when he doesn’t call for a medic, [or] take the two seconds to put him in a seatbelt?” Schatzow said. “Instead of a medic, he sees the doors to the van close. Those are the doors to his life...”