Baltimore Circuit Judge Barry Williams denied motions for a mistrial Monday in the case against Officer William Porter, accused in the death last April of Freddie Gray.
Defense attorneys said they learned over the weekend that Gray, who died of a broken neck, told a Baltimore police officer a month earlier that he had a back injury.
Prosecutors said they did not learn of the statement until Monday morning when they were notified by two assistant state’s attorneys.
Williams, who heard the defense arguments after the jury had been dismissed for the day, prosecutors have “a continuing duty” to disclose information to the defense. While he declined to grant a mistrial or dismiss the case, he said he would allow the defense to use the officers’ statement.
Porter is the first of six officers to stand trial in Gray’s death, which set off arson and looting throughout the city.
Earlier, defense attorney Joe Murtha pressed Assistant State Medical Examiner Carol Allan and neurosurgeon Dr. Morris Marc Soriano of Rockford, Ill., an expert medical witness, about the possibility that Gray had a back injury prior to his encounter with police. Both witnesses said they saw no evidence of a prior injury that would account for his death.
Examination of Examiner Continued
Murtha’s cross examination of Allan provided providing the most heated exchange so far in the week old trial.
The two sparred over whether she used a “guideline” or the more exacting “standard” to define homicide.
Murtha suggested the homicide definition from the National Association Medical Examiners is a standard. But Allan said there are regional differences to the definition of homicide and what Murtha read was only a “guideline.”
Defense attorneys have said Allan was pressured into ruling Gray’s death a homicide.
Allan said her opinion was based on witness statements, the condition of Gray at each stop, and his injuries found while at the hospital and during the autopsy.
She added she would not have ruled Gray's death a homicide if the driver of the police van – Officer Caesar Goodson - had taken Gray to the hospital, as Porter suggested.
Porter told investigators he and Goodson, who is charged with second degree murder in the case, had agreed Gray should go to the hospital. That was after Gray, shackled hand and foot on the floor of the van, asked Porter for help at the vehicle's fourth stop.
Instead, Goodson picked up a prisoner at North and Pennsylvania avenues, and then drove to the Western District police station.
State Expert Weighs In
Soriano, the prosecution witness, said prompt medical attention would likely have prevented Gray’s death.
He said Gray's injury came from forces similar to a motorcycle rider being thrown from a bike, or an unrestrained car passenger being ejected. He says Gray could not have broken his neck by intentionally banging his head against the walls of the van. Porter said in a statement to investigators that he could hear Gray banging in the back of the vehicle.
This is at least the second time Soriano has appeared as an expert witness against the Baltimore police. His testimony in the case of Dondi Johnson, a Baltimore man who was arrested in 2005 for public urination, left paralyzed after riding in the back of a police van and died two weeks later, helped Johnson’s family win a $7.4 million settlement against the city.
Soriano testified 's testimony, Johnson suffered an injury in the same section of his spinal cord as Gray, and that in pulling the man out of the van, the officers exacerbated his injury. Like Gray, Johnson was not buckled into a seat belt.