Leid Stories – 01.12.16

Justice on Hold: Maryland Court Delays Cop’s Trial in Freddie Gray Case

“Attorney at War” Alton H. Maddox Jr., dissects yesterday’s ruling by Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals postponing the trial of a Baltimore police officer charged in the death of Freddie Gray. Officer Caesar J. Goodson Jr., the driver of a police transport van in which Freddie Gray suffered neck and spinal-cord injuries that killed him on April 19, 2015, was scheduled to go on trial yesterday. But the appeals court halted the trial, saying it needed time to review the hearing judge’s decision to allow prosecutors to call as a witness against Goodson fellow officer William Porter. Porter, the first of six officers indicted in Freddie Gray’s death, was the first to go on trial; a mistrial was declared when the jury could not reach a verdict. Maddox had predicted the outcome of Porter’s trial. He explains the “legal back door” that the prosecutors’ failing legal strategy has left open in this controversial case.