BALTIMORE — Baltimore’s top prosecutor acted swiftly in charging six officers in the death of Freddie Gray, who suffered a grave spinal injury as he was arrested and put — handcuffed and without a seat belt — into a police transport van.
But getting a jury to convict police officers of murder and manslaughter will be far harder than obtaining arrest warrants.
Legal experts say the case is fraught with challenges. The widely shown cellphone video that captured the nation’s attention shows Gray, 25, being loaded into a police transport van, but not what happened once he was inside. Other than the accused officers, the only known witness is a convicted criminal later placed in the van’s other holding cell, unable to see what was happening with Gray.
State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced the charges Friday amid the backdrop of a city in turmoil — four days after public anger over Gray’s death triggered riots.
By bringing charges less than two weeks after Gray’s death, Mosby, 35, said her decision showed “no one is above the law.”
“To the people of Baltimore and the demonstrators across America: I heard your call for ‘No justice, no peace,’ ” Mosby said. “Your peace is sincerely needed as I work to deliver justice on behalf of this young man.”
Within hours, the city’s police union questioned the prosecutor’s impartiality, accusing her of a rush to judgment and demanding she recuse herself from the case. Some of those who support Mosby’s stand worry further violence might erupt if she fails to win convictions.
Alan Dershowitz, a well-known criminal lawyer from New York and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, suggested that Mosley’s actions were motivated more by political expediency and short-term public safety than strong evidence.
He called the charges “outrageous and irresponsible,” especially the second-degree murder count against the van’s driver under a legal principle known as “depraved heart.”
“The decision to file charges was made not based on considerations of justice, but on considerations of crowd control,” Dershowitz said Saturday.
To win a conviction, city prosecutors will have to convince a jury that transport van driver Caesar Goodson acted so recklessly that he knew his actions could take Gray’s life.
“That’s really the sort of shocking charge,” said Andrew Alperstein, a Baltimore defense lawyer and former prosecutor.
Across the nation, it is rare for law enforcement officers to be charged after fatal encounters with suspects, much less convicted by jurors often predisposed to give extra weight and credibility to the accounts provided by police.
In the Gray case, the video evidence is murky, with no visual evidence the officers purposely beat him. Expert witnesses are likely to disagree on whether Gray was seriously injured when the Baltimore officers pinned him to the sidewalk and cuffed his hands behind his back. Gray was recorded asking for medical assistance as he was hefted into the waiting van, his feet dragging along behind him.
Glenn Ivey, a defense attorney and the former chief prosecutor in Prince George’s County, Md., said Mosby’s prosecution would likely be considered successful if she were to secure any felony conviction against the officers that results in lengthy terms in prison. Second-degree assault carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.
“Typically in police cases, if you get a conviction on almost any of the charges, it’s viewed as successful because police cases are hard to win,” he said.
