Officer charged in prisoner death decides against jury trial

He is expected to waive his right to a jury trial in favor of placing his fate in the hands of Judge Barry Williams, who acquitted Nero and Goodson.

But the judge said prosecutors can’t use Rice’s in-service training records – a trove of 4,000 pages police recently handed over – because prosecutors failed to share them with the defense team soon enough.

The judge recessed proceedings until Thursday morning, when the trial is scheduled to begin.

Rice, 42, is one of six officers charged and the fourth to be tried in the case. Gray ran once they had “made eye contact” with him, officers said, which caused the young man to run “unprovoked upon noticing police presence.” . Two bystanders captured the arrest on video, showing Gray screaming in pain while being dragged to a police van by officers.

It sounds like it’s certainly possible that the prosecutors had trouble getting the documents, but that’s not the judge’s problem nor is it the responsibility of the defense.

Chief Deputy State’s Attorney Michael Schatzow said the documents had only been obtained last Tuesday after “months and months and months” of seeking them from the city. Per the Baltimore Sun, prosecutors have cited training to supports its claim that the cops involved in Gray’s arrest acted against what they were taught. Goodson, 46, was the driver of the police transport van in which Gray sustained his fatal injury.

Prosecutors say Gray’s death was a result of a so-called “rough ride”, in which Gray was intentionally left un-belted and then the victim of violent stops and turns.

Prosecutors will stress his role as the highest-ranking officer and focus on his training.

Two officers in recent months have been acquitted in the Gray case at the end of bench trials: Officer Edward Nero and Officer Caesar Goodson. The case helped stoke the national debate over policing in minority communities.

The defense filed motions to dismiss the indictment and to make public the records of the grand jury after a police detective alleged that the state’s attorney’s office had provided her with an inaccurate written statement to read and did not allow her to respond to questions from the grand jury.

There has been no conviction in so many cases: Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Kimani Gray, Tamir Rice, Travares McGill, Kathryn Johnston, Sean Bell, Rekia Boyd, Amadou Diallo, Kenneth Chamberlain, Aiyana Stanley-Jones.

William Porter is set for retrial in September after his case ended in a hung jury in December. The most serious charge involves the officer’s failure to secure a handcuffed Gray with a seatbelt in the police van. Considering that the evidence against Rice is the same as that offered by the prosecution in the other cases, and will be heard by the same judge, the verdict will not likely favor the prosecution.

Of course, whether those trials will ever take place depends – at least in part – on Mosby wiggling out of her own charges and avoiding being disbarred.