The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday morning that Baltimore Police officer William Porter must testify in the trials of the other five city officers charged in last April’s death of Freddie Gray.
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In a victory for prosecutors, the Court of Appeals ordered Officer William Porter to testify in the other cases even though he faces a retrial in Gray’s death.
Porter was the first officer to stand. Whether he could be made to testify against other officers involved in the case prevented their trials from moving forward.
This is a developing story.
The six officers charged in his death face an array of charges.
Williams also had denied a motion by prosecutors to force Porter to testify against the other three officers – Lieutenant Brian Rice and Officers Garrett Miller and Edward Nero.
The officers were charged with a range of crimes, including manslaughter, gross negligence, involuntary manslaughter, misconduct, false imprisonment, reckless endangerment and assault.
J. Amy Dillard, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, said the appeals court could write the ruling in such a way that limits its impact on other cases, latching onto unusual details about the cases against the officers.
Porter himself has already gone on trial, but it ended in a mistrial in December.
Miller, Nero and Rice face misconduct in office, reckless endangerment and assault charges.
A new trial date has been set for the next officer to stand trial on charges stemming from the death of Freddie Gray. Gray later died, touching off days of protests and rioting that grabbed national attention.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys asked for a postponement at a brief hearing before Baltimore Circuit Judge Charles Peters. The state must hold a hearing to prove that none of Porter’s statements – directly or indirectly – as a witness will be used against him at his own trial. While the question in the cases against the officers is unusual, Dillard said, there have always been routes for prosecutors to appeal over some issues before a trial a begins. Still, the defense cases just got more hard, he said. They are people who haven’t been saturated by media reports, read transcripts or heard the testimony and can “come in with a clear mind”, Alperstein said.
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Information for this article was contributed by Justin Jouvenal and Lynh Bui of The Washington Post; and by Juliet Linderman of The Associated Press.
