What Have the Freddie Gray Trials Achieved?

Three Baltimore police officers have been tried for killing Freddie Gray, and none have been convicted. These trials took place in a city radicalized by Gray’s death and during a summer when the pattern of police officers killing African-American men around the country has not ceased, but the protests in Baltimore have been muted. The third trial, of an officer named Caesar Goodson, was considered the signal one. Goodson faced the heaviest charges, since he drove the paddy wagon in which Gray, his hands and legs shackled but his body not belted in place, was allowed to bounce around, restrained from protecting himself, until he suffered a fatal injury to his spinal cord. There are four more trials to come (three defendants have not yet had their cases brought to court, and a fourth, William Porter, is scheduled for a retrial this fall). But Goodson’s acquittal, on June 22nd, indicated that the most serious charges are not likely to end in convictions. Whatever justice for Freddie Gray’s death looks like, it will probably not involve long prison sentences for cops.