The Office of the State’s Attorney for Baltimore will retry officer William Porter in the death of Freddie Gray, the office announced Monday. The decision comes after a judge declared a mistrial on his case last week.
Porter’s trial is set to begin June 13, The Baltimore Sun reports, and will likely cause serious issues for the prosecution. The prosecution planned to use a convicted Porter to testify against the other officers, but the mistrial makes the officers less likely to testify against each other.
As of now, all the officers are pleading the Fifth Amendment, but a convicted officer could be pressured to testify. Since Porter, who is black, is not convicted and still could be retried, he can’t legally be required to testify and will likely continue to plead the Fifth.
Police arrested Gray in April and transported him in the back of a police van. Details are uncertain and accounts differ, but Gray appeared healthy when arrested and was injured within an hour after his encounter with police. His spinal cord was severely damaged, and he died a week later from the injuries.
Porter, 26, was the first of six officers to be tried. All will be tried separately. Porter is charged with reckless endangerment, misconduct, assault and involuntary manslaughter. Although he did not arrest Gray, he is accused of not properly buckling him into the van which may have allowed Gray to slide around in the back, potentially causing the injury.
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