Mosby quickly announced charges against the six officers involved in Gray’s death after the Baltimore man suffered fatal injuries during a ride in the back of a police van, Atlanta Black Star reports.
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Rice is the fourth of six officers to stand trial in the case. Rice was the officer who handcuffed Gray to the floor of the police van while onlookers watched.
The judge said the state failed to show that Rice was aware of an updated policy that requires officers to buckle in prisoners.
The officer’s attorney said police could use discretion, if they believe their safety is at risk.
Reading his verdict in a packed courtroom, Williams said that while Rice’s failure to seat-belt Gray “may have been a mistake and may have been bad judgment”, it didn’t amount to a crime. The cops loaded Gray into the van and shackled him.
Ryan, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, had previously called for Mosby to drop charges after the acquittal of Officer Caesar Goodson last month. In fact, though Rice was originally charged with two counts of misconduct, the prosecution dropped one of those charges at the beginning of the trial and midway through the trial, Judge Williams dismissed the second-degree assault charge.
A Baltimore judge has handed down a familiar verdict in connection to the arrest and death of Freddie Gray last April.
But Doug Colbert, a law professor at the University of Maryland, said there was still value in having brought the prosecutions, even if they were unsuccessful.
“It’s clear that emotions and tensions ran high on April 12, 2015 on Mount and Baker”, Williams said of the second stop of Gray’s trip to jail.
“This defendant is not an inexperienced officer”, Schatzow also said of Rice.
Gray’s death ushered in a resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests across the country.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake asked the community to continue to respect the judicial process during “a very hard time for our city”.
Two more officers face trials in the days ahead, and Officer William Porter will face a retrial. The officer made the correct split-second decision while Gray was being combative and a hostile crowd looked on, they said. Officer William Porter’s trial ended in a hung jury in December and his retrial is scheduled for September.
Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. said he told his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, that China’s condition “was not consistent with our constitution and our national interest”, adding Wang warned that if the Philippines insists on China’s compliance to the decision, “we might be headed for a confrontation”.
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After four trials and no convictions, it’s increasingly clear that the evidence against six Baltimore police officers is too weak to sustain the hopes of citizens desperate for reform.
