Prosecutors say Gray asked Porter for help and told him he couldn’t breathe, but the officer didn’t call for a medic.
Advertisement
He had just two years on the force when he and five other officers were charged in connection with Gray’s death.
The defense attorney says there was not one word about Gray not being able to breathe. Prosecutors said Gray didn’t change positions between the fifth stop and the final stop because he’d already suffered the injury.
Brown was an 18-year-old black man fatally shot by a white police officer in Missouri last year. But, he later maintained that he still wasn’t sure if Gray was actually hurt or merely trying to avoid jail, a tactic that the defense characterized as “jail-itis”, which Proctor defined as “sustaining an injury to get out of going to jail”.
“In the blink of an eye a situation could be out of control, and at least then you know EMS is on the way”, she said.
In addressing the jury, Proctor sought to portray the officer as a caring young man who became a police officer not “to swing a big stick” but to help people.
He told the jury that they “may hope finding him guilty will quell unrest”, but that Porter committed no crime.
Schatzow suggested the fatal injury could have happened when the van’s brakes engaged, since Gray could not have used his hands or feet to brace himself.
Porter, Proctor claimed, did everything that Gray asked of him.
Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said: “Everything is at stake”.
When Gray said he did need assistance, Porter told the driver of the van, Ceasar Goodson, that Central Booking would not accept Gray because he was injured.
The prosecutor disagreed. “He has a duty to keep safe persons in custody”, said Mr Schatzow.
Defense attorneys will present their opening statements at about 1:45 p.m., after a lunch recess.
“He doesn’t say he’s in pain, he’s not wincing”, Proctor said of Gray during Porter’s interaction with him at the van’s fourth stop.
The officers shackled his feet, replaced his metal handcuffs with plastic ones, and pushed him back into the van face down.
Mr Porter did not aid Gray as he rode in the police van after being arrested in April, despite his various requests for medical attention. He was still dismissed.
The first of six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of a 25-year-old black man who suffered a spinal injury went on trial Wednesday, seven months after the city erupted in riots over the case.
She was in the courtroom for opening statements.
Gray’s death in April triggered rioting, arson and protests in the largely black city and fuelled a national debate over police tactics and relations with minorities.
The jury was seated Wednesday in trial for Officer William Porter, the first of six officers to go to trial.
Porter’s defense team challenged the jury of eight African American and four white residents to “show Baltimore that the whole damned system is not guilty as hell”. The four alternates are men.
Freddie Gray, 25, died from a severe spinal cord injury he received while in police custody.
He’s charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office.
Advertisement
All of the potential jurors also said that they knew about Gray’s death, which sparked nationwide protests, and even prompted a curfew in the torn city.
