You seem to have ‘diffused’ the guilt completely away from one person: Freddie Gray.
Besides the original crime that got him arrested, when he was placed in the van, despite being handcuffed & shackled, he was still combative enough that the officer declined to get close enough to buckle his seat belt. Assuming that it was the lack of being buckled in that caused his injuries (I don’t know if that has been proven), it seems that his actions deserve a good share of the .fault’.
Freddie Gray committed no crime, according to the state’s attorney. There was never probable cause for an arrest.
The idea that the officers found a cuffed and shackled prisoner too “combative” to also be seat-belted is a serious denigration of their professional abilities. Or, you know, the expectation that they give a shit about this citizen’s life.
I would like to learn more of that. Do you have a link? Thanks.
Unfortunately for the State’s Attorney, they have lost every case in which they made that allegation at trial.
And, indeed, they should lose it. From my understanding of the facts, the officers had reasonable, articulable suspicion to detain Gray, and during the course of that detention discovered a knife that gave rise to probable cause that Gray violated Baltimore City Code §59-22, which provides in pertinent part:
In other words, according to the State’s Attorney, officers Nero, Goodson, and Rice were all guilty of various crimes, including participating in an arrest not grounded in probable cause, and in each case, the court did not accept the State’s Attorney’s analysis.
Can you explain why you believe there was no probable cause for the arrest, if in fact you believe this?
Running from police is not a crime, of course.
Do you believe this arrest would have been upheld, and a conviction on the knife obtained, if Freddie Gray had survived police custody? (Are you certain he possessed the knife?)
As a practical matter it’s virtually 0% likely the State’s Attorney would have claimed the police unlawfully arrested Gray if no harm had come to him. They’d have never heard of the case.
Whether Gray would have been convicted is immaterial to whether the arrest was an unlawful act by the police, very different burdens of proof. It just obscures things to speculate about that.
Likewise we could speculate and ask one another if we were ‘sure’ what suspects did or had that the police say they did or had in just about every arrest.
So that response doesn’t effectively counter the previous statement IMO. The States Attorney’s claims there wasn’t probable cause for an arrest, but the court has basically rejected that claim in the cases so far.
There was strong political pressure to mount some kind of prosecution of the officers involved in this case. I can see the prosecution’s motive to move forward despite a weak case. I don’t see what the motive of the judge has been to find against the prosecution except that the case is weak: simplest explanation.
It seems to me that is clearly part of “resisting arrest”.
As far as I can tell there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Freddy Grey was injured due to his seatbelt not being buckled. By that I mean there is no evidence that the vehicle he was in hit any thing, nor evidence of a “rough ride”. People don’t die solely by being in a car without a seat belt, something else has to happen to make that happen.
If he decided to stand up and bang around that’s on him. Anyone who has ever ridden in a car knows that standing is a bad idea let alone banging around, as evidenced by the other passenger, in an effort to protest being arrested. At some point Mr. Grey needs to take the blame for his own actions.
Not exactly, at least in this case. Taking off running at the sight of the po-pos isn’t resisting arrest. It goes a good long way towards reasonable suspicion, and no doubt most of the runners don’t tamely submit the instant they get caught, but I don’t think Gray was charged with resisting arrest for running. I am open to correction on the point.
Regards,
Shodan
Who cares?
The question is, “Did probable cause exist for the arrest?”
Who cares?
Obtaining a conviction requires that the State prove each and every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
But probable cause requires merely that the facts and circumstances in the officer’s knowledge, together with the reasonable inferences therefrom, give rise to a a belief that the suspect likely committed the crime.
So if nothing untoward had happened, I think the arrest would have been upheld but the charges dismissed or, if for some reason taken to trial, resulted in a not guilty verdict.
But that not guilty verdict is utterly irrelevant to the issue of probable cause.
I asked:
Your response had no explanation at all.
Can you explain why you believe there was no probable cause for the arrest, if in fact you believe this?
No. The police had not even indicated an intent or reason to arrest him at that time.
I guess this is some kind of lawyerly game, to pretend that you are stupider than (I believe) you are. I’m not interested in playing.
When he took off running at sight of the police? I don’t think the police wanted to arrest him before he started running.
If I recall the circumstances correctly, the police were on bike patrol thru a high-crime district. Gray spotted them and took off running at the sight, whereupon the police chased him, caught him, and found the knife on him. Question for the lawyers - does making like a bunny as soon as the police make eye contact constitute reasonable suspicion, and sufficient legal basis for a brief detention?
Regards,
Shodan
It’s not in the least a game.
I’m asking you if you believe the arrest was supported by probable cause. Your earlier comment on the matter simply relayed the State’s Attorney statement on the matter. I pointed out in response that the State’s Attorney had lost that claim in court and I supplied reasons that the existence of probable cause had nothing to do with the further points you raised.
So, again: can you explain why you believe there was no probable cause for the arrest, if in fact you believe this?
Correct. It’s not illegal to suddenly begin running when you see police, and there was no arrest or detention in progress.
It can be suspicious, and can serve as the basis for a Terry stop.
Excellent question.
In 2000, the Supreme Court confronted this question in the case Illinois V. Wardlow. Wardlow fled when he saw police cars approaching the area. He was pursued and detained by two Chicago police officers. They performed a patdown - the “frisk” part of “stop and frisk” – and discovered a concealed firearm, which led to his arrest and conviction for unlawful possession of a weapon by a felon. Mr. Wardlow appealed this conviction, claiming that the officers’ detention was not based on reasonable, articulable suspicion.
From that case’s head notes:
Thanks, Bricker.
Regards,
Shodan
Wardlow is the law of the land. But I’m not sure the Kennedy of 2015, much less post-Scalia Court, comes out the same way. I think we are also likely to witness the unraveling of the “high crime area” justification featured in Wardlow.
Which, again, is not to disagree with Bricker’s analysis, but just to note that it might be a bit like relying on Bowers v. Hardwick in 2002.
I certainly acknowledge that Wardlow may be living on borrowed time, although I think it’s more likely to die the death of 1,000 cuts than get explicitly overruled in one fell swoop viz. Bowers.
But that won’t help the State’s Attorney convict officers for making an arrest without probable cause that happened April 2015.
Side note of interest: the next trial up is Officer Garret Miller. His testimony was used against Officer Nero involuntarily – that is, he declined to testify at Nero’s trial citing his own Fifth Amendment rights. The state obtained an order compelling him to testify, but this order came at a price: they are foreclosed from using Miller’s testimony, or any derivative evidence, against him at his trial. The state had to assemble a “clean team,” of prosecutors who had to promise not to listen to or read anything that would let them know anything from Miller’s immunized testimony.
So Miller will be tried by a fresh prosecution team, with presumably additional guarantees that ensure his Nero trial testimony is not being used against him.
Miller’s trial will be particularly interesting on the issue of probable cause for the arrest. The state’s theory of the case is that Miller detained and arrested Gray and then transported him to a different location before he ever found the knife, in contrast to Miller’s report that his discovery of the knife led to the decision to arrest Gray.
Even if the arrest is found to be without probable cause, the state faces an uphill battle in its legal theory that an arrest not grounded in probable cause constitutes per se criminal misconduct in office.
FYI- just saw a banner on CNN that charges were dropped against the remaining 3 officers in the Gray case.
Yup. Happened during the “use and derivative use” immunity hearing I spoke of above. ("…presumably additional guarantees…")