As Retrial Looms For Officer Porter, Motions Filed For Van's Driver
BALTIMORE (WJZ)--Questions remain whether Officer William Porter will be retried in the death of Freddie Gray.
Porter was the first of six officers to go on trial, which resulted in a mistrial earlier this week.
WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren takes a closer look at the silence surrounding Officer Porter's future.
The pressure is on prosecutors with no decision publicly announced yet in the status of Officer Porter's trial.
Few know Baltimore courts better than veteran lawyer A. Dwight Pettit.
"They're in a stronger position to have the opportunity for a second trial. They are still sitting in the driver's seat," Pettit says.
For City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, the stakes are high. She faces personal criticism and a push from Freddie Gray's family for a retrial.
"And if they think that part of the reason that they didn't get a verdict was because Porter lied and that he was believed, that's cause for concern every prosecutor's office in the United States," said Billy Murphy, the lawyer for the Gray family.
A retrial allows people to get a definitive answer from this court system," said Cornell Brooks, NAACP President, CEO
But prosecutors may also feel that giving Porter immunity and using his testimony against van driver, Officer Caesar Goodson, in his trial, would give them better odds of at least one conviction.
The state's attorney's office has already started filing motions in Goodson's case as they move forward.
But making Porter a witness is complicated by prosecutors already calling the officer a liar in court.
"If they don't have Porter that has to way heavily into consideration. I think also we need to interplay in that, that the defense is a part because we don't know what the defense is negotiating for," Pettit says,
With Goodson's trial scheduled to start in less than three weeks a decision on Porter's retrial will come soon.
Both prosecutors and defense attorneys are under a gag order which prevents them from talking.
