Freddie Gray case: Police officer charged in case to face new trial

A Maryland judge declared a mistrial on Wednesday in the trial of the first of six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, whose killing sparked riots and arson in the city in April. Last week, a jury deadlocked in Porter’s trial, resulting in Judge Barry Williams declaring a mistrial.

The court announced Monday Porter’s new trial date of June 13.

Porter faces manslaughter, assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office.

Police arrested Gray in April and transported him in the back of a police van.

Goodson faces the most serious charge of any of the six officers, second-degree depraved murder, and his trial is set to begin January 6. In all, Porter’s trial lasted more than two weeks.

Gray died one week after being taken into police custody. All of the officers have pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors had argued that they needed to try Porter first, before Goodson and White, so they could call Porter to the stand in those trials.

“That means prosecutors face an uphill battle to introduce Porter’s statements to investigators or his testimony on the witness stand from his own trial, and will have to give heavy consideration to granting Porter immunity, legal experts said”.

“If instead of having to now say, ‘We don’t believe our case against Porter is strong enough, or we need to use Porter to get a conviction against other people, ‘ they’re moving him down the line, to the second-best case”.

The trials for the other five officers are expected to proceed as scheduled. “Now, it’s not impossible that at least some of these other cases can go to trial without Porter, but his testimony was going to be important”.

“I think they’ve got a big problem, whether it [the retrial] is set for June of ’16 or June of ’18”, he said.