BALTIMORE - A judge on Monday found the highest-ranking officer charged in Freddie Gray’s arrest and death not guilty on all counts, dealing a devastating blow to prosecutors, who have now tried four of the six officers initially indicted without winning a conviction.
Judge Barry G. Williams acquitted Lt. Brian Rice, 42, of manslaughter, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office after a week long bench trial, finding that Rice didn’t commit a crime when he loaded Gray into a police transport van without seat-belting him. Gray suffered a fatal neck injury as he was being taken to a police station.
The verdict renews questions about whether the state should move forward with charges against the remaining officers or drop them altogether. Two of Rice’s co-defendants were recently acquitted, and a third is awaiting retrial after a jury deadlocked in his case in December. Another two officers are set to be tried in the coming months.
Police arrested Gray in West Baltimore the morning of April 12, 2015, after he ran from officers on bike patrol. Rice and other officers shackled his wrists and legs and put him in the prisoner compartment of a police van without restraining him. Prosecutors say he fell and struck his head. He died a week later.
NEW DELHI - For the third day in a row, people in Indian-controlled, conflict-torn Kashmir did not get their newspapers because they have been banned.
The ban on newspapers came on top of the shutdown of cable TV operators and private cellphone service, actions imposed by the government as it struggles to control angry street protests against the killing of a popular leader of a terrorist group 10 days ago.
Newspaper editors are angry and are calling it a full-blown information war.
Young Kashmiris attacked police to protest the killing of Burhan Wani, a gun-wielding, social-media-savvy insurgent. More than 33 people died and hundreds have been wounded in the clashes, the worst outbreak of bloody violence in six years in Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region claimed by both India and neighboring Pakistan.
On Saturday, security forces raided printing presses and seized copies of newspapers in the state. The ban may last at least until Wednesday, a government official told editors.
A Taco Bell employee in eastern Alabama has been fired after she refused to serve two uniformed sheriff’s deputies and then told them to leave the restaurant, officials said.
Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones said the deputies initially thought the cashier was joking when she wouldn’t serve them late Saturday night at Taco Bell in Phenix City, near the Alabama-Georgia border.
On Monday, Jones told The Washington Post that “in light of the controversy around the country, I was very disappointed in the treatment of the two deputies. We work very hard to treat people with basic respect and all we ask in return is that they reciprocate.”
After an investigation, Taco Bell said the employee had been terminated – and the restaurant chain issued an apology to the Alabama deputies.
Associated Press & Washington Post
