The six Baltimore Officers charged in the deathof Freddie Gray. Photo courtesy of WBAL-TV.
A week following the acquittal of Officer Caesar Goodson, the remaining officers on trial for the death of Freddie Gray have requested that their charges be dropped.
According to NBC News, Lt. Brian Rice, Sgt. Alicia White, and Officer Garrett Miller filed motions Monday to have their criminal charges dismissed in the Freddie Gray case. Per court documents released Tuesday, each of their motions cited defects in the prosecution’s case.
“These defects occurred at both the District Court and Circuit Court levels and rise to a level which would violate the Officers’ rights of due process secured by the United States Constitution as well as the Maryland Declaration of Rights,” the motion filed on behalf of Miller read.
A total of six officers were charged in Gray’s death after the 25-year-old died from injuries he sustained in the back of a police van last April. Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby quickly announced charges against the officers involved, a move her critics argued was too “hasty.”
Rice, White, and Miller all face charges of manslaughter, assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office, NBC News reports.
So far, none of the officers put on trial have been convicted. The first, involving Officer William Porter, resulted in a mistrial while the latest two, including that of Officer Goodson, ended in acquittals. Goodson drove the police van the night Gray suffered fatal injuries. As a result, he faced the most severe charge of second-degree murder.
After Goodson’s shocking acquittal last Thursday, the Baltimore Police Union urged Mosby to drop the charges against the remaining officers involved in the case, Atlanta Black Star reports. Because her prosecutors have failed to draw convictions against any of the officers thus far, legal experts predict they’ll have a tough time indicting the remaining three as well.
The officers’ requests for dismissals comes on the heels of two bombshell revelations in the case.
Earlier this month during Goodson’s trial, Detective Dawnyell Taylor disclosed that a prosecutor had handed her a four-page, typed narrative that she was to read when she appeared before the grand jury, the Baltimore Sun reports.
“As I read over the narrative, it had several things that I found to be inconsistent with our investigation,” Taylor wrote in her daily log of case notes. “I thought the statements in the narrative were misquoted.”
“With great conflict I was sworn in and read the narrative provided,” she added.
According to the Baltimore Sun, Taylor testified in the Goodson trial that she turned her notes over to defense lawyers.
The second defect in the prosecution’s case came when a Baltimore sheriff’s major admitted to signing off on prosecutors’ charges when he didn’t have adequate details of the investigation, NBC News reports. The charges were part of a separate suit some of the officers filed against state’s attorney Mosby for defamation of character.
According to United Press International (UPI), this isn’t the first time the officers have asked for their charges to be dropped. The defendants previously requested dismissals because they felt their charges were politically motivated. This is the first time they’ve asked for dismissals on the basis of wrongful prosecution, the news site reports.
The trial for Lt. Rice, highest ranked of the three officers, is set to begin Tuesday.
