Prosecutors who oversaw a grand jury investigation into Daniel Prude’s death in Rochester, New York last year, interrupted the case for criminal charges with testimony from a medical expert who said three police officers held Prude to the ground until he stopped. breathe that didn’t do anything wrong.
Dr. Gary Vilke told the grand jury that Prude, a 41-year-old black man, died of a heart attack caused by the medical phenomenon known as agitated delirium. He said the agents’ actions, including placing a gauze cap over Prude’s head, did not affect his breathing, according to transcripts made public Friday.
A medical examiner ruled that Prude’s death was a murder due to physical disability asphyxiation, with the use of the drug PCP as a factor.
Vilke, a professor at the University of California, San Diego who routinely testifies on behalf of the police, said holding Prude in check during the meeting in the early hours of March 23, 2020 may have been best for his safety, given his condition.
Asked by a great jury member if anything could have been done better, Vilke replied: “I wouldn’t do anything else.”
The grand jury ultimately dismissed the crime murder charges by negligence against the three officers by 15-5 votes, the transcripts show.
Prosecutors from the Attorney General’s office did not file any other charges. They told the major jurors that they could choose not to press charges if they believed the use of force was justified. Five jurors said they would have voted to indict at least one of the officers.
The grand jury’s decision not to indict was announced at the time it was taken in February, but the transcripts of nine days of witness testimony – including Prude’s brother, police officers and experts – offer a rare look at a trial that is normally kept secret.
Cautious family attorney Elliot Shields said he believed prosecutors had undermined their own case by calling Vilke, who he compared to a defense witness.
“Obviously, they haven’t even tried it,” Shields told The Associated Press.
‘They hired him so he would come in and they could get cover and say,’ Well, we tried. “Well, no, you didn’t,” Shields said. “You tried to make sure these agents could escape freely.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James had said in announcing the grand jury’s decision that the state had presented the best case.
Her office on Friday defended Vilke’s use as an expert, saying it promised an independent investigation without a predetermined result.
The release of grand jury material comes at a sensitive time to the issue of race in police work. The testimony ends in the trial of former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd. And on Thursday, a camera video of the body showing a Chicago police officer was released fatally shoots 13-year-old Adam Toledo last month after he appeared to drop a handgun and start raising his hands.
Prude ran into police hours after he was released from a hospital following a mental health arrest. He ran naked from his brother’s house and saw him pounding shop windows. Prude’s brother, Joe, testified that he had warned an officer who responded to his house, “Don’t kill my brother.”
Prude’s death went largely unnoticed until September, when his family released body camera video of the meeting obtained through a request for public records. Emails later made public by the city showed that police commanders urged city officials to hold off on releasing the images.
The video showed Prude handcuffed and naked with a spit hood over his head while one officer pushed his face to the ground and another officer pressed a knee to his back. The officers held Prude for about two minutes until he stopped breathing. A week later he was taken out of livelihood.
Vilke told the grand jury that drug use and mental illness contribute to agitated delirium, that can make people vulnerable to cardiac arrest. There is no generally accepted definition of agitated delirium and researchers have said it is not well understood.
Vilke said he didn’t think the spit hood was a factor or that the officers were obstructing Prude’s breathing.
“So all these things allow me to put myself at ease saying that my opinion is that none of the agents, their impact, individually or collectively, would have caused or contributed to that cardiac arrest,” said Vilke . “And, to take it one step further, if he had been allowed to get up and run around … that would actually be more harmful than being restrained.”
Shields, the Prude family’s attorney, called Vilke’s claim that keeping Prude’s safer safer “ outrageous. ”
An officer testified that the police used the hood because Prude spit and they were wary of getting sick in the early days of the pandemic.
“I don’t know if you remember exactly how we felt about the coronavirus, but it was almost hysteria in the country,” said the unknown officer.
The state also offered the grand jury testimony of Geoffrey Alpert, a criminology professor at the University of South Carolina who previously worked as a federal supervisor for the New Orleans police force.
Alpert also testified that spit caps do not restrict breathing. He said it was reasonable for officers to pin Prude to the ground, calling it a generally safe method of restraint.
But he said officers probably kept Prude on his stomach for an unreasonably long time, though he added that he wasn’t a doctor and couldn’t say if that contributed to his death.
The footage of Prude’s arrest and restraint sparked nighttime protests in Rochester, a rust-banded town on the shores of Lake Ontario that was recently destroyed by camera footage of white officers using pepper spray on a 9-year-old black girl.
James, whose office is investigating the police shootings, has obtained a judge’s permission to disclose the grand jury’s usually classified material, citing a desire for transparency in Prude’s case. The transcripts were released with witnesses’ names obscured.
Seven officers, including the three involved in Prude’s restraint, remain suspended pending the outcome of an internal investigation.
Matthew Rich, an attorney for four agents who responded but was not involved in Prude’s restraint, questioned the closed-door process that paved the way for the transcripts to be released. Despite this, he wrote in a letter to the judge last month that he and his clients “have nothing to hide”.
A great Prude jury member praised the follow-up team’s “great work”.
‘If you hadn’t been everything you presented to us, I don’t think anyone would have made up his mind. You worked really hard and I’m sure no one took it lightly, ”the judge said. “It was a very serious matter. It’s terrible what happened to him. “
Associated Press reporters Larry Neumeister, Thalia Beaty, Jennifer Peltz, Jim Mustian, and David B. Caruso in New York; Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo and Michael Hill in Albany contributed to this report.
Follow Michael Sisak on Twitter at twitter.com/mikesisak