Gray died April 19 of past year, a week after his neck was broken in the police wagon. Judge Barry Williams will decide his fate in a bench trial.
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Nero, 30, is charged with second-degree assault and misconduct related to Gray’s arrest, and reckless endangerment and a second count of misconduct stemming from the way Gray was loaded into the van.
Legal analyst and former prosecutor Warren Alperstein says that shows prosecutors are focusing on the snippet of time when handcuffs were placed on Gray as the basis for the assault charge against him.
“Mr. Gray was put in a risky and unsafe position”, he said.
Unlike the first trial against Porter, which ended in a hung jury, the latest proceeding is a bench trial at Nero’s request.
Nero, who has not been jailed, attended the trial in a business suit, accompanied by his lawyers.
Gray was “passively and actively resisting arrest, banging in the wagon, kicking the wagon”, Zayon said.
Experts say the trial could potentially change the way police do their jobs.
“It is impossible for an officer to seat belt somebody who does not want to be shackled”, Zayon argued. Maryland’s highest court ruled they did, and one of the officers is expected to take the stand in Nero’s trial.
Lloyd Sobboh, a Baltimore police officer, testified that in May 2015 he participated in a video demonstration for the police department while he was a cadet, showcasing how easy it is to move about the police van even while in leg shackles and handcuffs. Jaffee testified that he was able to determine Nero had received an email just days before Gray’s arrest from his employer notifying that there were new policies – including that the use of a seat belt was a requirement for transporting prisoners – but he couldn’t say if Nero had actually opened the email and read it.
Marc Zayon, Nero’s attorney, portrayed his client as a man devoted to public service, including stints as an EMT and volunteer firefighter.
During opening statements prosecutors told a Baltimore judge that the defendant, Officer Edward Nero, disregarded his police training when he chased Freddie Gray and arrested him without probable cause, and was callously indifferent to the 25-year-old man’s wellbeing when he failed to secure him in a seatbelt.
“There may not be as much a debate about what happened as to whether or not what happened constituted a crime”, said David Jaros, University of Baltimore School of Law.
“Officer safety is not an abstract thing for Officer Nero”, Zayon said.
Nero is one of six officers charged in the case.
Nero waived his right to a trial by jury during a pre-trial hearing on Tuesday.
Opening statements for the state and defense lasted about 20 minutes each before prosecutors began calling witnesses. After a short foot chase, the officers caught Gray, arrested him and placed him in the back of a police van without a seatbelt. He then questioned whether the hypothetical officer was required to finish his assignment or if he had the “discretion” to stop and chase down the fleeing suspect.
Prosecutors sought to show that the Police Department was focused on improving safety in arrest vans.
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“There was no frisk when he was originally taken down”, Schatzow said. The judge has limited discussion in Nero’s case about the extent of Gray’s injuries, after defense attorneys argued that reckless endangerment only requires prosecutors to show the conduct was risky, and not necessarily what resulted.
