Majority Black Jury Heads First Freddie Gray Officer Trial

He said such an injury would have hindered Gray’s ability to breathe.

Gray’s death triggered protests and rioting in Baltimore, fueling the Black Lives Matter movement nationwide.

But defense attorneys offered a starkly different account, insisting that Gray never said he couldn’t breathe in Porter’s presence, that the officer tried to help Gray sit up inside the van and that he twice asked Gray if he needed a medic.

Prosecutor Michael Schatzow said there is no reason not to put a seat belt on someone in that situation “unless you didn’t care”.

Porter wasn’t initially involved in Gray’s arrest, but he was there at five of the six stops the van made that turned a short trip into a 45-minute ride to the local police station.

Porter also suspected Gray had a case of “jail-itis” – police slang for feigning an injury to avoid going to jail, his attorney suggested.

Porter also had been trained at the police academy to give medical assistance to people who request it and to secure detainees in vehicles with seatbelts.

The women cried softly as Schatzow laid out the state’s case against Porter, telling the jury that the officer was on trial “for what he did – and much more importantly, what he did not do”.

Prosecutors said they wanted Porter to testify first so they could potentially use him as a witness against at least two other officers.

A majority-black jury will decide the fate of Baltimore City Police Officer William Porter, who was one of the officers indicted in the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, the Huffington Post reports.

Porter, who also is black, is charged with manslaughter, second-degree assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment, carrying maximum terms of about 25 years in prison.

Gray arrived at a police station unresponsive, was taken to a hospital and died a week later. He told the judge he had some “unfortunate” experiences with Baltimore police, but believed he would be able to render a fair verdict.

When two officers spotted Gray on North Avenue on the morning of 12 April, he took off running, leading to a chase that resulted in his arrest, though Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore’s chief prosecutor, has questioned whether there was cause for arrest at all.

Prosecutors said Gray didn’t change positions between the fifth stop and the final stop because he’d already suffered the injury.

She was in the courtroom for opening statements.

After a lunch recess Tuesday, Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams called more potential jurors into a private conference room for individual questioning.

Protesters hold signs outside the Mitchell Courthouse on Monday, the first day of the trial of William Porter.

Opening statements may be heard as early as Wednesday. Williams told the prospective jurors in the pool of 75 to return to court on Wednesday unless notified in the interim that they have been dismissed.

Jury selection has resumed for a third day in the trial for a Baltimore police officer facing manslaughter and other charges in the death of Freddie Gray.

A jury could be seated Wednesday afternoon. In a recent filing, the defense included part of Porter’s statement to investigators, in which he recalled “an incident with Freddie Gray before… where another unit tried to arrest him and he had done the same thing”.