On Monday, the subject of whether or not Freddie Gray may have had a pre-existing back problem was brought up repeatedly by defense lawyers for Officer William Porter. Porter is one of six Baltimore City police officer charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray. He will go on trial next year.
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Goodson faces the most serious charge: second-degree “depraved-heart” murder.
Defense attorneys say Officer Porter received 41 emails that day.
Allan’s testimony was interrupted at midday to introduce Dr. Marc Soriano, an IL neurosurgeon and expert witness who told the court that, based on medical records including CAT and MRI scans, it appeared that Gray’s injury was comparable to what might be seen in a motorcycle crash or a auto accident in which a passenger is launched through a windshield.
For Soriano, the surgeon, the evidence was clear.
According to Soriano’s testimony, Johnson suffered an injury in the same section of his spinal cord as Gray, and that in pulling the man out of the van, the officers exacerbated his injury.
Any movement after Gray’s initial injury likely would have made it worse, Soriano testified.
Gray’s injury, a spinal contusion near his brain stem, was so severe that it caused swelling, bleeding and tissue death. They’ve been described as like diving off a shallow pool.
Porter told investigators that he and the driver of the van in which Gray’s neck was broken didn’t call for an ambulance because Gray was already in the van.
Defense attorney Joe Murtha, who is representing Officer William Porter, shouted pointed questions at assistant state medical examiner Dr. Carol Allan during her second day on the witness stand. However, she said the other prisoner may have overhead a seizure.
Gray died a week later from injuries he suffered in a police van. Prosecutors have painted Williams as an indifferent officer who didn’t call for a medic despite Gray’s indication he needed help, and whose failure to buckle Gray into a seatbelt amounts to criminal negligence.
On re-direct by prosecutors, Allan said that if there had been an injury to Gray’s spine anywhere below his neck, she would have found evidence of it during her autopsy. The detective noticed Gray was leaning one way and not sitting up straight, and Gray said that was why. Given that the city is a little more than two-thirds black, and that the case has come to symbolize simmering black distrust of the criminal justice system, the racial makeup of the jury was one of the more closely watched developments in the trial. Witnesses said that Gray had ceased rocking the van and protesting after the second stop, Allan testified.
“If Goodson had followed orders and driven Gray to the hospital, you wouldn’t have considered Gray’s death a homicide?” It was then, Allan said, that a medic should have been called for Gray.
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In cross-examination, Murtha asked Allan about a statement given to police by a man who was arrested and placed in a different compartment of the van during its fifth stop, before it arrived at the Western District station. At one point, Williams threatened to find Murtha in contempt of court following another lengthy exchange with Allan. He was unresponsive and not breathing.
