Defense attorneys for Officer Edward Nero closed out their presentation Wednesday, calling to the stand another expert to testify about police procedures and an officer who was present during Freddie Gray’s arrest and given immunity from prosecution by the state.
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Officer Garrett Miller, Nero’s partner, testified on Monday that he was the officer who arrested Gray.
Nero declined to speak in his own defense Wednesday, ending five days of testimony over whether his actions during last year’s arrest of Freddie Gray were criminal.
But lawyers for Nero have argued that he was ill-trained in securing detainees.
Nero was among three bicycle officers who chased Gray, 25, after he fled unprovoked in a high-crime area.
Closing arguments are scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday.
One count of misconduct and the reckless-endangerment charge relate to Nero allegedly putting Gray at risk when he put him in the arrest van without a seat belt.
Officer Edward Nero, 30, is the second officer to go on trial in Baltimore City Circuit Court over Gray’s death from a broken neck suffered while in custody inside a police van.
Gray’s death set of protests and he became a symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The defense called eight witnesses to bolster their argument that any reasonable officer in Nero’s position would have made the same decisions.
Novak also testified that after Gray was placed inside a police van for the second time, “the wagon was shaking… enough for it to go from side to side”.
His testimony echoed that of Officer Aaron Jackson, who gave a similar account on Tuesday.
The department’s policy required officers to buckle in prisoners.
The straps in the wagons are “spaghetti-like”, he said, and require both hands to operate.
“There would be no possible way to seat belt someone if an officer had one arm occupied across an arm or a chest to prevent him from assaulting you”, Reynolds said.
Nero’s field training officer, Sgt. Charles Sullivan, who worked with him before he graduated from the academy, says he also never taught Nero how to seat belt passengers in vans, and never initialed the training form that Nero performed or reviewed transporting prisoners. It should have been read aloud to officers at the beginning of their shifts, he said, and handed out to them – not simply emailed to the entire force. Nero helped those officers slide Gray onto the floor of the van, head-first.
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Nero requested a bench trial instead of a jury trial.
