Prosecutors did tenuously claim that the second-assault, reckless endangerment, and misconduct charges against Goodson, White, Rice and Porter, as well as the misconduct and reckless endangerment charges against Nero and Miller, all hinged on the purported failure of the officers to fasten Gray into the van with a seatbelt:

[Prosecutors] said each officer "caused physical harm" to Gray by failing to secure him in the back of the van, and that the van then acted as an "instrumentality" of each of them and "made harmful contact" with Gray.

Meanwhile the Baltimore Sun just ran a poll asking people:

"Do you believe the Baltimore prosecutors have the evidence to support the harshest charges against the officers who interacted with Freddie Gray?"

The results as of the writing of this post: Over 88% responded "No", while less than 7% responded "Yes" and ~5% "Unsure".

The spinal cord was intact. There is no mention of a crushed voice box.

The spinal cord was intact, but showed extensive edema, traumatic contusion (bruising) and necrosis of the cervical spinal cord, extension of the necrosis into the lower brainstem and high thoracic regions, and secondary, non-traumatic changes due to probable re-perfusion injury of the entire spinal cord."

The Baltimore Sun and 18 other news organizations asked a judge Friday to deny prosecutors' request for a gag order in the case against six Baltimore police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray, who sustained a severe spinal injury in police custody. [...]

The other news outlets are The Associated Press, Hearst Stations Inc., Sinclair Broadcasting, CBS Broadcasting Inc., Scripps Media Inc., ABC News, Bloomberg News, Buzzfeed, CNN, Fox News, Gannett, NBC News, National Public Radio, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The judge presiding over the prosecution of six Baltimore Police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray struck the state's motion for a gag order in the case. Judge Charles J. Peters ruled the motion lacked standing in an actual proceeding, as it was filed by Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby's office in Circuit Court on May 14. At that time, the officers' cases were still in District Court. They weren't transferred to Circuit Court until May 21, when the officers were indicted.

link

1. the prosecutors only rarely, if ever, ask that there be a gag order or limitations on discussions of the autopsy results;
   
2. that a number of well-publicized cases have taken place without any gag order or requested gag order in them;
   
3. that in those cases in which there is a limitation on the discussion of the autopsy, that it is generally the defense which requests the limitation and that the limitation tends to be preventing releasing autopsy photos and the purpose tends to be to avoid inflaming public passions, on the basis that if people see gruesome or horrible photos, that they tend to react to wanting to blame and pin the crime on someone, whoever is most convenient and that judges may regard release of photos inflammatory for that reason;
   
4. that in this case it has tended to be conservative commentators and news sources which are upset and/or irritated and/or suspicious of conspiracy and of motives of Mosby;
   
5. that Mosby has gone further than usual and also requested that the judge order witnesses to not share their stories with media--a request or practice not made in the cases of Zimmerman or Ferguson or other somewhat similar cases;
   
6. that results of a preliminary autopsy report was previously leaked, supposedly, stating Gray died of a spinal cord injury after his arrest;
   
7. that possible areas of problem or controversy are whether or not the injury was self-inflicted and/or whether or not Gray had had some spinal surgery recently and being active despite a doctor's instructions shortly after some other spinal procedure;

Marilyn Mosby, the prosecutor in the Freddie Gray case, continues to make news for all the wrong reasons.

First, her motion for a gag order in the case was dismissed because she filed it in the wrong court. ....

Mistakes like this aren't unheard of in litigation, but they smack of amateurism.

Second, it has been revealed that Mosby directed Baltimore police to ramp up narcotics patrols with increased "targeting" at an intersection near where Freddie Gray was arrested....

However, Mosby's directive seems to undercut what's left of the criminal charges she filed in connection with Gray's arrest, as opposed to his treatment thereafter....

Mosby's directive will make it difficult for her to argue that the area from which Gray fled is not a high crime area.

Actually, it was always going to be difficult to make that argument.

Now, it would be embarrassing....

Supposedly the ME's office has ruled or found or considered Gray's death a "homicide."  Does that mean that the autopsy we have not been able to see says that they regard the death as being caused by bad acts of the police?  Other choices perhaps could have been natural causes or accident?

*

Supposedly Ceasar Goodson was the driver and he is being charged with the most serious of the offenses . . .  but it is being reported that he repeatedly asked other officers to see that Gray was put in a position in a seat belt or restraint and that they did not do so.

And this is what it says:

The safest place for FG to be was on the floor of the police van where the officers had placed him at the 2nd stop.

But FG somehow was able to get up from the floor to his feet after that 2nd stop, lose his balance,  and suffer his fatal "high energy injury" before the 4th stop.

At the 4th stop an officer assisted him from the floor where he had fallen to the bench where the seatbelts were.

So the first opportunity the officers had to buckle or fail to buckle his seatbelt around him was at the 4th stop -- but the "high energy injury" had already occurred by then.

So the buckling or not buckling of his seatbelt was irrelevant to his "high energy injury". The fatal 'high energy injury" did not occur while he was sitting unbuckled on the bench but somewhere before the floor and his feet while he was standing before he ever got to the bench.

Had he stayed where they put him initially, on the floor, and not stood up, then no fatal "high energy injury" would have happened to him.

In the massive prosecution evidence dump is the video taped recording of Donta Allen's police interview that Donta tried to deny.

In this taped interview is Donta Allen describing fellow traveller Freddie Gray in the other compartment as a "madman banging against the walls trying to hurt himself" during that smooth straight ride back to the station.

Another piece of evidence notes an agreement with Officer Zachary Novak, who was the only officer present during the incident who was not charged with a crime.

There is no explanation of what the agreement says.

What or who was "101"? Mayor Rawlings? Commissioner Batts? Can you answer that?