Freddie Gray Van Driver Found Not Guilty On All Charges
June 23, 2016 10:39 AM
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2016/...r-in-freddie-gray-case-learns-his-fate-today/
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Officer Caesar Goodson, who was driving the police van inside which Freddie Gray incurred his fatal neck injury, has been found not guilty of second-degree “depraved heart” murder by Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams.
Goodson, 46, has also been found not guilty on charges of manslaughter, assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment.
After the verdict was read, protesters began chanting “Murderer!” over and over again outside the courthouse.
Inside the courtroom, with high security present, “People were quiet … There were a few people shaking their heads, some people who were emotionless,” WJZ’s Mike Hellgren reports.
“The judge said that the evidence simply was not there, that there was no way that Officer Goodson would have known that Freddie Gray was injured until that final stop at the Western district, and that’s when a medic was called. He chided the state for using the term ‘rough ride,’ he said that it’s a highly-charged term, they failed to define it.”
Hellgren says “the prosecution’s theory of the case did not fit the facts that they had presented to the judge and he was clearly troubled by this, and I find it hard to believe that he would convict any of the officers in any of the four remaining trials to come.”
WJZ’s Ron Matz reports that Officer Edward Nero, who was found not guilty of all his charges by the same judge last month, was in court and was one of the first to embrace Goodson after the verdict came down.
Goodson waived his right to a trial by jury. His bench trial began June 9 and final arguments were heard Monday.
Gray, a 25-year-old black man from the Sandtown area of Baltimore, died of his injury on April 19, 2015. A week earlier, Baltimore City police officers put him in the back of Goodson’s van, handcuffed and shackled, but unrestrained by a seat belt.
His death set off more than a week of protests followed by looting, rioting and arson that prompted a citywide curfew.
“Depraved heart murder is an unusual thing, it’s a kind of murder that a lot of people haven’t heard of,” attorney Adam Ruther of Rosenberg Martin Greenberg, LLP tells WJZ.
“To sum it up, it’s murder without the intent to kill. Normally in order to prove second-degree murder you have to prove the intentional killing of one human being by another. If you don’t have the intent but you have acts that raised to the level of extreme disregard for human life, things like firing a gun into a crowd of people, even though you didn’t intend to kill one specific person, doing that is so reckless it’s so irresponsible that the law says we’re going to hold you accountable as if if you had the specific intent to kill an individual. And so that’s what the state was trying to use in this case. And it’s an unusual application of the law, so it’s not entirely surprising that Judge Williams didn’t agree with the state’s theory of the case of extreme disregard for human life under these circumstances.”
June 23, 2016 10:39 AM
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2016/...r-in-freddie-gray-case-learns-his-fate-today/
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Officer Caesar Goodson, who was driving the police van inside which Freddie Gray incurred his fatal neck injury, has been found not guilty of second-degree “depraved heart” murder by Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams.
Goodson, 46, has also been found not guilty on charges of manslaughter, assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment.
After the verdict was read, protesters began chanting “Murderer!” over and over again outside the courthouse.
Inside the courtroom, with high security present, “People were quiet … There were a few people shaking their heads, some people who were emotionless,” WJZ’s Mike Hellgren reports.
“The judge said that the evidence simply was not there, that there was no way that Officer Goodson would have known that Freddie Gray was injured until that final stop at the Western district, and that’s when a medic was called. He chided the state for using the term ‘rough ride,’ he said that it’s a highly-charged term, they failed to define it.”
Hellgren says “the prosecution’s theory of the case did not fit the facts that they had presented to the judge and he was clearly troubled by this, and I find it hard to believe that he would convict any of the officers in any of the four remaining trials to come.”
WJZ’s Ron Matz reports that Officer Edward Nero, who was found not guilty of all his charges by the same judge last month, was in court and was one of the first to embrace Goodson after the verdict came down.
Goodson waived his right to a trial by jury. His bench trial began June 9 and final arguments were heard Monday.
Gray, a 25-year-old black man from the Sandtown area of Baltimore, died of his injury on April 19, 2015. A week earlier, Baltimore City police officers put him in the back of Goodson’s van, handcuffed and shackled, but unrestrained by a seat belt.
His death set off more than a week of protests followed by looting, rioting and arson that prompted a citywide curfew.
“Depraved heart murder is an unusual thing, it’s a kind of murder that a lot of people haven’t heard of,” attorney Adam Ruther of Rosenberg Martin Greenberg, LLP tells WJZ.
“To sum it up, it’s murder without the intent to kill. Normally in order to prove second-degree murder you have to prove the intentional killing of one human being by another. If you don’t have the intent but you have acts that raised to the level of extreme disregard for human life, things like firing a gun into a crowd of people, even though you didn’t intend to kill one specific person, doing that is so reckless it’s so irresponsible that the law says we’re going to hold you accountable as if if you had the specific intent to kill an individual. And so that’s what the state was trying to use in this case. And it’s an unusual application of the law, so it’s not entirely surprising that Judge Williams didn’t agree with the state’s theory of the case of extreme disregard for human life under these circumstances.”
