As for the foot chase that prompted Gray’s detention, Zayon told Williams that an email from the prosecutor’s office sent shortly before Gray’s arrest directed officers to pay special attention to the area where Gray was arrested because it had been deemed “an open-air drug market”.
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Nero, a trained emergency medical technician, said that based on his training, he didn’t believe Gray was having an asthma attack.
During his testimony, Ross said he, Gray and another man, Davonte Roary, had tried to get coffee from a local shop that morning, but it was closed. Legal observers have said it is an unusual theory, and the case is expected to involve complex arguments about the authority of officers to stop citizens.
Bartness said he hoped the officer would respond to the emergency. Defense attorneys had argued that the knife was illegal under city code, and prosecutors have since determined the issue to be moot because they say Gray was wrongfully detained before the knife was even found.
That officer and two others, including Nero, chased Gray, who was arrested.
Bailey testified Thursday that he was responsible for generating reports about whether prisoners are buckled in during police transport. As agreed to in pretrial motions, prosecutors played a silent version of the video in court.
“The defense on the other hand is going to say it’s a very crowded space and it would have been more hard for the officer to seat belt”.
Gray was placed in handcuffs and put in the back of a police transport van, where he suffered a critical spinal injury. Zayon added that the first time Nero touched Gray was to help him, after he asked for his inhaler.
There’s some satisfaction just in seeing the judicial process at work, and the fact that jurors must have had strong convictions and stood by them, says J. Wyndal Gordon, a Baltimore defense attorney who’s attended parts of the Porter trial – and represents two young men facing serious charges that stem from the unrest. Nero “deprived Mr. Gray of his liberty” by failing to follow protocol, Schatzow said, asking the judge to return guilty verdicts.
Though the situation is still surrounded with some doubts as in the previous trial of Officer William Porter, related to the same death the jury was not able to come to the decision out of either complexity of the case or of the fear to violate the impunity of police. Hundreds of people were arrested and more than 100 police officers were injured.
Ross answered, “I said it sounded like a Taser”.
After his testimony, Ross was taken away from the court in handcuffs. Ross said that he changed his name to avoid retaliation from officers and that he thought he had heard something that “sounded like a Taser”.
“It is not reasonable; it is not in line with law, training and policy”, Franklin said.
“It’s easy to sit here and…parse out this event”, he said.
Baltimore police Detective Michael Boyd also testified.
Nero, who has not been jailed, attended the trial in a business suit, accompanied by his lawyers.
Nero opted for a judge trial, rather than a jury trial.
Prosecutors also called Officer Adam Long, a 21-year veteran of the force who is now an academy instructor.
Thursday was the first day of trial proceedings for Nero, the second of six officers indicted in Gray’s death – and it was dominated by discussion of whether Gray should have been buckled up, and what discretion officers have on following the department’s policy for buckling up suspects. All the charges are misdemeanors. Williams also presided over Officer William Porter’s trial, which ended with a hung jury and was declared a mistrial in December 2015.
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He is facing trial in a stabbing in March, and remains in jail.
