Why one Baltimore attorney thinks all of the Freddie Gray trials may be about to collapse
Last week we learned about the bombshell which dropped in Baltimore during the trial of Ceasar Goodson, one of the officers being charged in the death of Freddie Gray. The state was found by the judge to have withheld testimony from a witness who was in the police van on the same trip which resulted in Gray’s eventual death. As I noted at the time, this calls the entire premise of the prosecution’s case into question if the judge accepts the witness’ testimony as being credible and Goodson is really the highest value “target” for State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby in the entire affair.
Now, as revealed in an interview at The Daily Caller, one Baltimore Attorney observing the case seems to feel that if Goodson is found not guilty, the entire sequence of trials is essentially headed for the scrap heap.
Officer Caesar Goodson drove the police vehicle transporting Gray before his death and is accused of giving Gray a “rough ride,” where a driver intentionally drives recklessly to cause an unbuckled passenger to slide around in the back. Prosecutors are trying to prove Goodson drove dangerously enough to to cause Gray’s fatal injuries and thus warrants a criminal conviction. One Baltimore attorney says the whole case hinges on Goodson’s trial.
“If they can’t prove that they can’t prove anything,” local Baltimore attorney Steve Silverman, who is not representing anyone in the case, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The whole point is they put him in the back of a paddy wagon and they roughed him up and that’s why he died. If you can’t even prove causation for the basic theory of the case for the driver of the vehicle and the injury then how can you prove all these ancillary officers did something wrong?”
“Goodson is the center of the universe when it comes to this case,” he added. “If they cant’ prove this case, I don’t know what they’re going to do. If they can’t convict Goodson then they can’t convict anybody.”
That sounds about right. We’ve already locked in on the idea that Goodson was the “most culpable” of all six officers, being the driver of the van who supposedly administered the “rough ride” and the one responsible for securing any prisoners correctly. This really is the big show for Marilyn Mosby. A conviction here could at least establish a framework which assumes that somebody did something wrong and some of the other officers might still be convicted on lesser charges. But if Officer Goodson is acquitted across the board, that assumption underlying the rest of the trials is pretty much erased.
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Why one Baltimore attorney thinks all of the Freddie Gray trials may be about to collapse https://t.co/KIEI30GqcZ
— HotAir.com (@hotairblog) June 13, 2016
I don’t know why they keep saying this information withheld is a “bombshell”. This was reported shortly after the incident. We all knew about it then as well as the fact that the prosecution was grasping at straws. No surprise here.
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