Prosecutors supervising a grand jury investigation into the death of Daniel Prude in Rochester, New York, last year, weakened the case for criminal charges through the testimony of a medical expert who stated that three police officers who held Prude to the ground until he stopped breathing did nothing wrong.
Dr. Gary Vilke informed the grand jury that Prude, a 41-year-old Black man, died of a heart attack brought on by exuberant delirium. According to transcripts of the proceedings made public on Friday, he stated that the cops’ actions, including throwing a hood over Prude’s head, had no effect on his respiration.
The medical examiner classified Prude’s death a homicide due to physical restraint-induced asphyxiation, with PCP use as a contributing factor. According to academics, there is no commonly accepted definition of enthusiastic delirium and it is not well understood.
Given Prude’s state, according to Vilke, a professor at the University of California, San Diego who often testifies on favor of law enforcement, it may have been prudent to restrain him during the interaction on March 23, 2020.
When asked by a grand juror if anything could have been done differently, Vilke replied, “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
How a dubious illness, “Excited Delirium,” may be shielding police officers from claims of misbehavior. 13:32
According to the transcripts, the grand jury ultimately rejected criminally negligent homicide charges against the three officers by a vote of 15 to 5.
The state attorney general’s office did not seek any additional charges. They informed the grand jury that they might elect not to indict if they judged that the use of force was appropriate. At least five jurors stated they would have voted to indict at least one officer.
According to the transcripts, Jennifer Sommers, the deputy chief of Special Investigations, instructed the grand jury, “You are not an arm of the prosecution, and you are not to draw any judgments about what we believe, feel, or anything else.” “You are an autonomous entity.”
The grand jury’s decision not to indict the officers was revealed at the time it was taken in February, but the transcripts of nine days of evidence from witnesses — including Prude’s brother, police officers, and experts — offer a rare glimpse into a generally secretive accountability process.
In her announcement of the grand jury’s verdict, New York Attorney General Letitia James stated that the state had presented the strongest case possible for the officers’ prosecution.
Her office defended its use of Vilke as an expert on Friday, stating that it pledged an impartial, outcome-free probe into Prude’s death.
The publication of grand jury documents occurs during a delicate period for the issue of race and policing. The trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd is drawing to a close. And on Thursday, a body camera footage of a Chicago police officer fatally shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo last month was made public.
Prude confronted the police hours after being freed from the hospital following an arrest for mental illness. He was witnessed smashing store windows after fleeing his brother’s house naked. Joe, the brother of Prude, said that he warned a responding officer, “Don’t kill my brother.”
04:11 A recently leaked body camera footage from Rochester, New York, shows a naked man suffocating in police custody.
Prior to September, when his family published body camera footage of the interaction obtained through a public records request, Prude’s death was mostly overlooked. The city then disclosed emails in which police commanders asked city officials not to release the tape.
The video showed Prude chained and naked with a spit hood over his head, with one officer pressing his face on the ground and another pressing a knee to his back. The officers restrained Prude for around two minutes, until he ceased breathing. A week later, he was taken off life support.
Vilke told the grand jury that substance abuse and mental disorders contribute to excited delirium, which can put individuals at risk of cardiac arrest. He stated that he did not believe the spit hood or the officers impeded Prude’s breathing.
“Therefore, I am confident in stating that none of the cops, individually or collectively, caused or contributed to that cardiac arrest,” Vilke stated. “And, to go even farther, if he had been permitted to stand up and go around, it would have been even more destructive than being restrained.”
An officer said that officers wore the hood because Prude was spitting and they feared contracting the disease in the early stages of the pandemic.
The unidentified officer told the grand jury, “I don’t know if you guys recall precisely how we felt about the coronavirus, but it was close to mass panic.”
At one point, prosecutor Michael Smith drew grand jurors’ attention to a 2015 training bulletin informing officers that “positional asphyxia can occur when a person’s body position interferes with respiration, resulting in serious injury or death” and that the risk of such asphyxia “can increase when the person is restrained in a prone position.”
The footage of Prude’s arrest and restraint spurred nightly protests in Rochester, a city in the Rust Belt on the coast of Lake Ontario that was recently roiled by body camera footage of white officers deploying pepper spray on a 9-year-old Black child tied in the back of a squad car.
Continuing protests in Rochester, demanding justice for Daniel Prude 03:06
James, whose office reviews police shootings, obtained a judge’s permission to release the normally confidential information in Prude’s case, citing a desire for transparency. The transcripts were released following a review in which the identities of witnesses were blacked out.
The cops who participated in the restraint of Prude remain suspended until the conclusion of an internal investigation.
Matthew Rich, the attorney for four policemen who arrived but were not engaged in the restraint of Prude, questioned the closed-door procedure that led to the release of the transcripts. Last month, despite this, he wrote to the judge that he and his clients “had nothing to hide.”
Attorneys for Prude’s brother stated they were still reviewing the documents and were unable to comment.
One member of the grand jury in the case of Prude applauded the prosecution’s “outstanding work.”
“I believe that no one would have reached a conclusion if it weren’t for the information you provided. You worked really diligently, and I’m certain no one took it lightly “juror stated. “It was a pretty grave situation. What happened to him was horrifying.”