He described Gray’s neck injury as similar to that suffered by a diver landing headfirst in a shallow pool.
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But a defense lawyer for Officer William Porter rejected the allegations, saying that the officer had no responsibility to strap in Freddie Gray and that Gray showed no signs of being ill or injured.
Porter “knew he didn’t go quietly” during earlier arrests, so when Gray became passive while requesting a medic during stops 4 and 5, the officer assumed he had exhausted himself rocking the vehicle early in the ride, Proctor said.
Porter also said he helped lift Gray onto a bench inside the van, but he did not closely assess the prisoner’s condition or summon medics.
“The defendant alone is on trial for what he did, or more importantly, what he did not do”, Schatzow said.
The jury, composed of five Black women, three Black men, three white women and one white male was chosen after the questioning of 150 potential jurors over the span of two days which started on Monday.
Brown was an 18-year-old black man fatally shot by a white police officer in Missouri last year.
He faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment.
A prospective juror for the trial of a police officer charged in the death of Freddie Gray says he was dismissed after telling the judge he had some “unfortunate” experiences with Baltimore police.
“To the people of Baltimore and the demonstrators across America, I heard your call for ‘no justice, no peace, ‘ ” said Baltimore’s chief prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby after announcing the charges against the police officers involved in Gray’s death from spinal injuries. In a recent filing, the defense included part of Porter’s statement to investigators, in which he recalled “an incident with Freddie Gray before… where another unit tried to arrest him and he had done the same thing”.
Prosecutors said Gray didn’t change positions between the fifth stop and the final stop because he’d already suffered the injury.
Jury selection is expected to wrap up Wednesday morning, which could mean that opening statements could get under way before the end of the day.
Prosecutor Michael Shatzow said Wednesday during opening statements in Officer William Porter’s trial that the officer failed to put a seatbelt on Gray and didn’t call a medic, even though Gray complained that he couldn’t breathe.
“If it slams on its brakes, he’s going to move at the speed it was going before it slams on its brakes”, the prosecutor said. He previously ruled to keep the trials in Baltimore, denying a series of defense motions to move them out of town on the grounds that pretrial publicity and the citywide curfew after the riot would make it particularly hard to empanel a fair and impartial jury.
A court spokeswoman said she did not know how many potential jurors would be called back to the court on Wednesday or how many had been dismissed as of Tuesday.
The first witness was Alice Carson Johnson, an instructor at the Baltimore Police Academy, who was questioned by prosecutor Janet Bledsoe about Porter’s medical and other training.
The state said that by the time Gray arrived at the Western District police station from initial arrest, he was limp and unconscious and was taken to Shock Trauma then.
Under cross-examination by defense lawyer Joseph Murtha, Johnson said she had no record of Porter taking refresher courses after leaving the academy. The driver asked him to check on Gray. Trials for the other officers – Alicia White, Garrett Miller, Edward Miller and Brian Rice – will follow later in 2016. Prosecutors say Gray repeatedly asked for medical attention.
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Porter will likely take the stand in his own defense.
