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Mistrial Declared in First Freddie Gray Trial in Baltimore
Yesterday, a mistrial was declared in the trial of Baltimore police officer William Porter, the first of six officers accused in the death of Freddie Gray to go before a jury. Jurors announced they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on any of the four counts against Porter: involuntary manslaughter, second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct in office.
I am on the record as saying that none of the accused officers would be convicted of any crime, and I am even more confident in this assertion now than I was when I first made it here on Ricochet back in June. Prosecutors felt their strongest case was against Porter, whom they hoped to convict and then bargain with on the sentence in exchange for his testimony against the other five defendants. The case should never have been heard in Baltimore, where pressure on jurors for a conviction was significant. If there was ever a case deserving of a change of venue, this was it. The fact that prosecutors couldn’t secure a conviction even under these circumstances does not bode will for their chances in the remaining trials.
There is a gag order in place, but soon enough word of the jury’s deliberations will leak out. My suspicion is that the jury was leaning for acquittal, but that some small minority insisted in holding out for guilty verdicts. Reasonable doubt was everywhere in the case against Porter, as it is in the case against the others. The entire case is a stain on the legal profession, and it’s heartbreaking to see William Porter and his five colleagues put through this ordeal for such nakedly political purposes. Shame on all who had a hand in this.
I haven’t been paying much attention to this case lately, but I was shocked to see the charges filed in such a political way. It’s heartening to see (part of) a jury resisting the pressure.
Can’t help wondering who Porter and his colleagues have been voting for though.
See my post on this. The trial was a complete travesty of justice. Absolutely rigged. I am shocked and thrilled at the result.
Posted here:
Stalin and Mao would be proud.
Freddy Gray dies in a van. All the evidence is that his injuries were self-inflicted – even the fellow prisoner who rode with him in the van said he was flopping and ramming his head into the wall.
Until the witness retracted the story. And then the prosecution tried to withhold the Medical Examiner’s report (the autopsy) from the defense.
The police officer being tried first did everything right – except the administrative detail of buckling Gray in (which was a new department rule only a few weeks old).
A judge refused to move the venue – so it had to happen in Baltimore City. Nobody with a pulse missed the riots, the “rule-by-mob”, the sacking of the city. Every juror in the pool experienced the riots, and had opinions. They were sat anyway.
Then the judge refused to sequester the jury. Why would they? It is not as if the Baltimore Sun was running editorials and op-eds walking the entire population through how to be on the jury, and convict those bad police officers. Oh, sorry. They were.
So every night the jurors got to go home. And hear and read all the news reports about how, if there was no conviction, the city would burn down. But it was OK, because the judge told the jurors to avoid newspapers and the television.
In the middle of deliberations, the jury was also sent home for the night. So, too, were letters with every public school student, explaining what would happen if there were riots again, because of what the jury did. Nobody was instructed not to read those.
Any juror knows full well that they have no privacy. That any “no” vote is quite likely to result in bricks, bullets, or molotov cocktails through their car and home windows.
But an amazing thing happened on the way to a slam-dunk conviction. Americans are not (all) sheep. Even here.
Someone on the jury refused to play. And we have a mistrial.
Pray for the jurors who held out for justice.
And pray that the next jury also has the courage to refuse to follow the orders of the kangaroo judge, DA, mayor, and media.
Every police officer I know feels betrayed. Every one who has options is getting out.
I have another underlying fear, based on how quickly the judge accepted the “hung” mistrial. I’ve been following trials for a long time, and I have never heard of a judge allowing a hung jury on just the third day of deliberation. Well, maybe for a DUI or something. Could it be that the jury was leaning heavily toward acquittal, and would have gotten there, and to prevent that, the judge moved quickly to give the prosecution a second shot at it?
Would this be corruption personified? Absolutely. But of course it’s Baltimore.
Excuse my ignorance, and I mean that, but if the jury could not convict, why is the officer not ‘acquitted’? Why do they get another shot at convicting him?
A mistrial is when the jury says they cannot reach a verdict, either majority or unanimous, depending on the court. It’s the only case in which the trial can be repeated. Think of it as the legal equivalent of restarting the computer when it shuts down mid-process.
Is there nowhere that politics does not corrupt?
I’m sure you’re correct, but to a layman it sure smells like double jeopardy. What is a positive outcome of a mistrial? Why is it allowed?
I can answer that one – because the jury has to reach a verdict – guilty or not guilty. In a criminal case the verdict has to be unanimous.
If twelve (or six or 24, depending on the type of case) good citizens cannot reach a decision, the case has not been decided. It gets kicked back to the indictment phase, and can be retried if the prosecutor chooses to do so.
Why not simply acquit the defendant? Because you reduce the jury for conviction from 12 to one. Eleven say the accused is guilty, one says he is not. Justice is not served. The holdout juror may have reasons other than the evidence.
Once someone is acquitted they cannot be tried again, even if jury tampering is proven. (It is hard to prove, and often the penalty for jury tampering is smaller than for the crime being tried.) By allowing for mistrial, someone potentially tampering with a jury has to bribe 12 people instead of one. And you know what they say about secrets – three can keep a secret when two are dead.
I served on two juries and ended up as principal juror on both. The logic was explained to me then, because we almost had a hung jury on one of them.
Seawriter
Can there be another mistrial if it’s tried again? How many chances do they get? Is there a chance the venue could be changed for the retrial? Sounds like the local juror pool, from this outcome and what iWe says, could be stymied no matter what.
There can be, in theory. I’ve seen murder cases take three trials to reach a verdict. Whether they’ll go to that length in Baltimore remains to be seen.
Kudos on an excellent post at the Member Feed. I should have known someone would beat me to it on this.
The case should not have been heard in that venue. The fix was in and the pols still could not get their political victim sacrificed.
Soros-rented buses will presumably soon be delivering agitators to re-ignite the violence. The President will chide us for our racism and there will be new rumblings about federal prosecutions from Minister of Justice Lynch….
An example of Lynch law?
Seawriter
There was a Hassidic Jew from Toronto – Rosenbloom or Rosenbaum – murdered on a street in Pittsburgh some years ago. I think they did that trial three times before the prosecution gave up.
I was a Baltimore City resident for about 30 years and was called for jury duty many times. Around 1997 I was selected for a jury for a double homicide…multiple stabbings. The defendant was a 25 year old black kid. I was one of two white men on the jury. Everyone else was black.
Long story short…11 jurors found him guilty. One held out for not guilty, ending in a hung jury. The reason this one hold out (a middle aged black woman) insisted he wasn’t guilty? The police cannot be trusted to deal fairly with a black man and in all cases it can be assumed that it was a set up perpetrated on an innocent black man.
Aside: Is Baltimore City the full name of the place? I’ve never seen it with “city”, which is said twice here.
The name of the city is Baltimore, but the county is also Baltimore, so Baltimore City police/courts/etc. is used to specify which level of government.
ah. thanks.
I like the system (Scottish or Irish, I forget which) in which there are three verdicts. Guilty, Not Guilty and Not Proven. Not Proven has the same effect as a Not Guilty but allows the jury to say, “we think its likely he did it, but not beyond a reasonable doubt.”
I’d endorse that but for the fact that Arlen Specter weaseled out that way in the Bill Clinton impeachment trial. Who knew that was only the beginning of his weaseliness.
I read the explanation of Seaweiter and others above, but the fact is that if they try him again, he’s being tried twice for the same crime. The prosecution failed to get him the first time and now they get second chance. He is “in jeopardy” twice.
It would seem that way, but the declaration of a mistrial means they can try him again if they choose to. And again, and again, if they wish. In the present case, it all depends on the political winds in Baltimore. They’re obviously not embarrassed by bringing a case they can’t win.
They are co-equal. Baltimore City is an entirely different jurisdiction from Baltimore County. No overlap whatsoever.