State failed to tell defense that Freddie Gray complained of prior back problems, judge rules
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Version 0 of 1. BALTIMORE — Prosecutors failed to disclose that Freddie Gray complained of back problems the month before he suffered a fatal spinal injury in police custody, a judge ruled Monday during the trial of one of six officers charged in Gray’s arrest and death. Judge Barry G. Williams said defense attorneys would be allowed to use the information, but he stopped short of dismissing the case, declaring a mistrial or striking the testimony of a medical expert as defense attorneys had wanted. Defense attorneys said they received information Saturday from Baltimore police that Gray told an officer in March that he had injured his back or had a bad back and that the officer noticed that Gray was sitting awkwardly in a chair. Prosecutors said in court that an assistant state’s attorney had received the information previously but that the attorney did not share the information with colleagues working on the Gray case. “The state had a duty to disclose this information,” Williams said. The exact nature of the previous back injury or how Gray received it remained unclear Monday. Williams said he would seal a document that detailed the information. And a medical examiner has testified that she had not seen any evidence of such an injury during an autopsy. Williams’s ruling, made outside the presence of the jury, came during the second week of the trial of William G. Porter, the first of the six officers charged in the case to go to trial. It followed hours of testimony in which the defense challenged medical experts who declared that Gray’s death from injuries sustained in the back of a police van in April was a homicide rather than an accident. Defense attorney Joseph Murtha accused medical examiner Carol H. Allan of engaging in rash speculation to aid prosecutors by deeming Gray’s death a homicide. “You actually sort of made up this thing that you are calling evidence,” Murtha said. “It should have been [labeled] an accident.” Allan defended her findings, and Murtha’s assertions provoked an angry response from Williams, who threatened to hold the defense attorney in contempt of court. “Do not testify again in my courtroom,” Williams said. Allan, too, was lectured by the judge for disputing several questions rather than answering them directly. The testy exchange, lasting more than two hours, cut to the heart of prosecutors’ challenge in this high-profile case. Exactly when and how Gray entered a coma when he was inside a police van on April 12 remains a mystery. Porter, who has pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office, was present at five of the van’s six stops and told investigators Gray did not exhibit signs of distress during the ride. [Complete coverage of the Freddie Gray case] “No one was there,” Allan said. Cameras inside the van were inoperable. Witnesses and detectives offered only pieces of the story. Her judgment that Gray’s fatal injury was foreseeable and preventable, she said, was based on her experience, her autopsy and her investigation. Gray, according to Allan, likely stood up in the van after he had been shackled, handcuffed and placed on his stomach in a compartment in the back. He then hit his head because of a dramatic acceleration or deceleration of the vehicle, she said, and was paralyzed from the neck or shoulders down while his ability to breathe slipped away. If Gray had received medical treatment when he asked Porter, about halfway through the ride, Allan testified, his death would not have been a homicide. Instead, Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., the driver of the van, stopped to pick up another suspect and then drove to the headquarters for the Western District before Gray was found unconscious inside and a medic was called, prosecutors said. Goodson, also charged in the case, is awaiting trial. Angelique Herbert, the medic, testified Monday that she saw Porter and another officer holding Gray’s head on each side when she arrived. Gray’s legs were bent on the ground as though he was kneeling; blood seeped from his nose and saliva rimmed his mouth. “ ‘He’s not breathing!’ ” Herbert recalled yelling. “ ‘What the hell?’ ” The second prisoner in the van, Donta Allen, told police that Gray could be heard banging around after the point at which Allan deemed the spinal cord injury likely occurred. Allan said those movements could be explained by a seizure, as Gray’s head and neck muscles would still have been functioning. Murtha disputed Allan’s version of events, saying that the space in the back of the van was too snug for Gray to be flung around while lying on his stomach. Each time he was checked, Gray was lying down. At one point, Porter helped Gray onto the van’s bench, Murtha said, but would have said something if the prisoner could not use his legs. Morris Marc Soriano, a neurosurgeon called to testify by the prosecution, bolstered Allan’s version of events. He said that Gray could not have sustained his injury by intentionally banging his head against the van’s walls. Like Allan, Soriano likened Gray’s injuries to those sustained after diving into a shallow pool or being thrown from a car during a crash. “It’s the wrong motion,” Soriano said. “The mechanism of the injury by banging your head backward is not possible.” Assuming he was injured before the van’s fourth stop, where he first asked Porter for medical attention, Gray was “already developing a hunger for air,” Soriano said. If a paramedic responded at that point, he said, Gray “would not have suffered the brain injury, which is ultimately what killed him.” But the medical testimony also helped defense attorneys make the case that Goodson bears more responsibility for Gray’s injury and treatment. Murtha said Porter had told Goodson that he did not think Gray would be admitted to central booking because of his poor condition and that he should be taken to a hospital. “If Mr. Goodson had listened, you would not have considered this a homicide, correct?” Murtha asked the medical examiner. “That is correct,” Allan replied. “If he had gotten prompt medical attention, it would not have been a homicide.” In a videotaped interview Porter gave to investigators that was played last week in court, he told investigators that medics typically don’t respond to calls to treat prisoners if they are already in a police wagon. But Herbert said that in her 17 years as a medic, she has never refused a request to aid a prisoner. The trial resumed Monday with an unexpected change in the makeup of the jury. Because of an undisclosed medical emergency, the judge opened the proceeding by replacing a black female juror with a white male alternate. The switch now means the jury is composed of seven African Americans and five whites, seven women and five men. Steve Hendrix contributed to this report. Sign up for e-mail updates on the Freddie Gray case. We’ll e-mail you new Washington Post stories on the trial as they’re published. |