Several officers testified that arrestees were rarely, if ever, buckled into police vans.
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Prosecutors alleged that Porter, 26, disregarded his duty by not strapping Gray into the van while also failing to get him medical help when he asked for it and, at one point, claimed he couldn’t breathe. The jury was hung on all four charges.
A jury deliberated at length as to whether Porter could be held responsible for involuntary manslaughter and assault, but emerged deadlocked. Deliberations began on Monday.
Mr Gray was arrested while fleeing from officers and died on April 19, a week after his neck was broken inside a police van as a seven-street trip to the police station turned into a 45-minute journey around West Baltimore.
No one may ever be convicted in the death of Freddie Gray.
“You lose your ability to call yourself a protester when you choose to harm people and damage property”, Commissioner Davis said. “You lose the ability to call yourself a protester when you hurt people and destroy property”.
About two dozen demonstrators walked a few blocks to the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center to check on the teen who was arrested outside the courthouse. The paper reported the two were being booked on charges of disorderly conduct and failing to obey a lawful order. That means justice has not been found”, Kwame Rose shouted into a bullhorn, adding soon after: “Do not tell us to protest in peace”.
Freddie Gray’s stepfather, Richard Snipley, issued a statement and thanked the jury for their service to the public, their quest for justice, their personal sacrifices, time and effort.
“We are not at all upset with them, and neither should the public be upset”, Shipley said at a news conference outside the Baltimore courthouse Wednesday evening. “We serve because we know so many good and decent Baltimoreans need us to stand in between them and crime, disorder and chaos”. The hung jury reflects a deep divide among Baltimore residents about the officer’s culpability and suggests that a fair trial in the city might not be possible, said Steve Levin, a city defense attorney and former federal prosecutor.
“We are confident there will be another trial with a different jury”.
Numerous community leaders say that they will be on the streets throughout Baltimore, making sure things stay peaceful.
“I urge everyone to remember that collectively, our reaction needs to be one of respect for our neighbourhoods”, Ms Rawlings-Blake said.
Baltimore’s mayor said the city was prepared for the protesters.
She said she might have to turn in her badge because she doubted “some of the motives” of the police.
Johnson anxious that if Porter and the other officers were acquitted “it will be 1968 all over again”, referring to the destructive riots that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. He went on: “We break laws, they break laws, but we get locked up”.
Gray was critically injured in the van and died a week later.
Another group of protesters gathered in Gray’s neighborhood, near where a drug store was burned during the rioting, where they expressed disappointment at the outcome.
Colbert says that unless prosecutors are determined to retry Porter, they’d likely prefer a plea bargain over granting him immunity from prosecution.
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As jury deliberations in Mr. Porter’s trial entered their third day yesterday morning, city officials were bracing for a repeat of the destruction, looting, and arson that dotted the city last April, following Gray’s death. However, Officer Porter may face another trial if State’s Attorney Marylin Mosby decides to pursue a re-trial. “They really have big problems here, because they were planning on using Porter as a witness against the others, and now he’s sort of in this hyperspace”.
