Maryland’s high court on Tuesday ordered a Baltimore police officer to testify against five colleagues also charged in the death past year of Freddie Gray, a black man whose death triggered protests and rioting. The court rejected Porter’s request to not testify against Officer Caesar Goodson and Sgt. Alicia White, and reversed a lower order denying prosecutors’ requests to call Porter to testify against Officer Edward Nero, Officer Garrett Miller and Lt. Brian Rice. He died a week later from a critical spinal injury he suffered while handcuffed and shackled, but unrestrained, in the back of the police van.
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New trial dates will have to be scheduled for the police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray after Maryland’s highest court ruled that one of them will have to testify against the others. Porter’s own trial ended with a hung jury in December, and he is scheduled to go on trial again on June 13.
His lawyers had argued that making him testify in other cases would violate his right not to incriminate himself.
The postponement came hours after an appeals court ruled that Officer William Porter must testify against his colleagues while he awaits a retrial.
Porter, who plead not guilty to manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment charges, was the first to be tried in Gray’s death.
The appeals court issued two rulings.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys asked for a postponement at a brief hearing before Baltimore Circuit Judge Charles Peters.
“It seems like an issue that can be resolved very narrowly and on these specific facts”, she said.
In federal cases, prosecutors bring in teams of attorneys from other jurisdictions to handle the trial – a “taint team” that is seemingly insulated from a defendant’s previous statements as a witness.
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“Does the state in Porter’s case, if he is ultimately prosecuted, bring prosecutors from a completely different part of the state?”
