Thank goodness.

Everybody's misused him
Ripped him up and abused him
Another junkie plan
Pushing dope for the man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B6TKClP…

Second degree seems quite a stretch. They found a wound on his head matching a bolt on the inside of the van. He was thrashing himself around on the inside of the van, something you can't do if your spine in already broken. He was probably high on PCP. He had a long and illustrious career as a drug dealer/user.

Let this be an example to other prosecutors around the country.

I still don't understand what happened in the Eric Garner Staten Island case. Just because a county attorney decides to fluff a grand jury hearing to avoid prosecuting doesn't mean the State's Attorney General can't step in or that the Governor can't appoint a special prosecutor. It also doesn't mean the officers involved were cleared of anything, despite what I hear sometimes in the press, and regrettably from Rachel Maddow in that clip. Only a trial jury can do that. There's no such thing as double jeopardy from a Grand Jury. A prosecutor can convene as many Grand Juries as he wants until he gets an indictment. That is, if he even needs a Grand Jury to indict. The Garner case had enough prima facie evidence to indict without one.

The police in NYC are generally a quality outfit and the City government is a decent enough operation. But, whenever the NYPD gets in trouble, the joint seems to dissolve into a banana republic.

@5 "[State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby] detailed how officers repeatedly ignored Gray's pleas for help and that officers bound his arms behind his back and put his legs in clamps but did not secure him within the police wagon with a seat belt,"

Arms and legs tied and then left loose to bounce around the back of the wagon.

Is there any case of police misconduct against black men that racists like you won't try to hand-wave away?

Only spurious bullshit like this tailor made for gullible twits like you. It'll be interesting to see them prove how not wearing a seatbelt in a moving car caused his spine to sever at the neck. What sort of terrain were they driving over Matlock? It's obvious he broke his own neck somehow. If they denied him medical care then manslaughter is more than fair and I support those charges.

@5: It doesn't matter if someone is a drug dealer, a horse dealer, a car dealer, a card dealer, or a New Dealer; murder is murder and it is still illegal.

Marilyn Mosby did the right thing today and the message sent is a welcome one.

From the Q&A following her announcement:

Reporter: what will prevent another Freddie Gray?
Mosby: Accountability.
Reporter: There hasn't been any for so long.
Mosby: You're getting it today.

It's about time.

@9 sometimes evidence isn't politically correct. Maybe they can use one of your ad hominem attacks in their case? It is clever.

@8 I give your troll a 4.5. Just below median standards for trolling. See you needed some "concern troll" elements in there for it to break a five. And then maybe some Rand Paul quotes or something.

There is actually an infamous nickname for what the Baltimore PD did to Gray. It's called a "rough ride." See those vans are mostly unpadded aluminum and steel. You accelerate with an unsecured but shackled perp in the back and you slam on the brakes. Fuck's 'em up real good.

I'm not sure if you know this Mr. Troll but modern vehicles have all sorts of safety features. From seat belts to airbags and padded dash. See cars didn't used to have these things. we have all that shit so people don't get broken necks during collisions and braking.

After forty years of studying moderate speed (under 40 MPH) collision fatalities a significant portion of fatalities due to impact trauma when braking, you know, like getting your neck broken on the dash because you don't have a seat belt on.

But yeah. I guess you can believe a barely conscious shackled perp can somehow violate the laws of physics and break their own neck. If you're a racist idiot.

@5: One, the PCP allegation is the sort of thing that would show up on a toxicology report, and there's no evidence, from eyewitness testimony or video recording, that Mr. Gray was intoxicated at the time of his arrest. And excuse me, but I'm going to play the bio-major card here and say, based on my pretty fundamental knowledge of gross anatomy, that it's impossible for a bound prisoner to break three cervical vertebrae, crush his larynx, and sustain a severe spinal cord injury just from thrashing around in the back of a police van. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, Teckel. I'm inclined to agree that you're engaging in racist victim-blaming.

@8: He wasn't in a moving car. He was in the back of a police van. Want to see what that looks like?

http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/04/23/…

He was placed into a ten foot long metal box and then driven around with no seatbelt and, as his arms and legs were bound, almost no ability to brace or protect himself. It is entirely possible that someone in that position could sustain a severe spinal cord injury.

Fascinating how far backward you are willing to bend to blame the victim here.

@14 The infamous "rough ride" is when you place a shackled perp on their stomach, unsecured, on the floor of the wagon. And that is EXACLY what they did.

The prosecutor is bringing homicide changes precisely because the early medical examiner evidence showed a severed spinal column - and that occurs through extreme shearing impact - exactly like a car accident victim.

How does a shackled prone suspect can generate enough force to sever their own spinal cord?

They would have to, first, try several attempts that would render them unconscious and fracture the skull long before spine would sever.

Second, it's amazing that they'd have to exactly reproduce a high impact collision at at least over 30 MPH due to extreme braking. They'd have to be like the fastest person alive.... while on their belly without the use of arms and legs in less than 6 feet of space.

What an amazing coincidence!

Thank goodness for MEs and prosecutors who do their job rather than just work in cahoots with the police. I wish we had one of those prosecutors in King County.

Meanwhile, two police officers in Atlanta shot a woman to death in their squad car that they say was shooting at them. From their squad car after they had arrested her.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/atlant…

If he had the ability to hurl himself into things at 30 mph, while his limbs were shackled, I'm pretty sure we'd have known about this before. Mostly because that means he can probably fly.

Either a guy can fly, and hid that power his entire life, before using it to expertly frame some cops for his murder... or the cops murdered a guy. It's not too hard to see which one's more likely.

@12) You forget that troll was ACTUALLY IN THE VEHICLE when this went down. Saw it all and provided the PCP. Why or how he got there - well, you'll have to ask jeebus.

@13 - nah...ya' think?

I'm starting to change my mind about handgun control. It appears that most of them are used by their predominately white male middle-aged fearful of brown people authoritarian boot-licking owners to commit suicide. Maybe the answer is to let them keep their guns, the faster to move along the demographic shift...you know, when the blame-the-victim stops working and they get scared the people they've defacated on for years will start to do unto them the same way. Fear and loathing indeed.

The site of Gray's arrest and the police station where he ended up are less than half a mile apart and should have been a less than 2-minute drive. Instead, as reconstructed from the known (and DOCUMENTED) stops the van made, the trip took 40+ minutes and went halfway across town. The bulk of it being before the second passenger was picked up (stop 5 of 6, in the article linked below).

Hard to explain this as anything but a "rough ride." Not that they won't try.

http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1381676

Even if it turns out that not being belted in caused his death the best you can hope for is a manslaughter conviction. In what courtroom are they going to prove you a murderer for failing to belt in a violent, resisting prisoner? Like I said above I support manslaughter charges. Mosby's move is purely political and meant to satiate the thugs in the streets like these. You proud of these freedom marchers?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-…

I dunno. Are you proud of your friends in the Klan?

@21 Where'd you get your JD, genius? The Glenn Beck online academy?

First you were postulating the preposterous theory, based on nothing I might add, that a shackled prisoner laying on his belly in the back of a van miraculously severed his own spine. oh. But now you support manslaughter charges. Well. You've sure come a long way.

You believe this despite the ME concluding the cause of death was not self inflicted and consistent with, at the very least, negligent homicide.

What're you going to say tomorrow? It was bigfoot?

Umm, Tekel @ 21 - if you watch the video of Gray being loaded into the van, you will see that he is not violently resisting anything. He can't even stand up.

@21: Ever heard of depraved-heart murder? That's actually what one of the officers is being charged with. It's when you act with reckless and depraved disregard for someone's life and they die as a result of your actions. But please, grace us with more of your wisdom, O Ye Who Knoweth It All.

@5, et al, I love it. The only person here defending the cops is a) wrong on his facts, b) has no respect for others, and c) is an obvious bigot.

@26 - this is because his neck/back may already have been broken.