Transcript: 15-5 grand jury vote cleared police
Prosecutors sought charge of criminally negligent homicide for officers involved in restraint
State AG releases details about the investigation into Daniel Prude’s death by suffocation last year in Rochester.
Newly released transcripts show that a grand jury investigating the police suffocation death of Daniel Prude last year in Rochester, New York, voted 15-5 not to charge the three officers involved in his restraint of a criminally negligent homicide charge sought by prosecutors.
That was the only charge prosecutors from the state attorney general’s office asked the grand jury to consider after nine days of testimony from witnesses including Prude’s brother, other police officers and experts.
The names of witnesses and jurors were blacked out of the transcripts, which were released Friday, weeks after State Attorney General Letitia James secured a judge’s OK to make the usually secret material public.
The release of the transcripts in the case of Prude, who was Black, comes at a sensitive time for the issue of race in policing. Testimony is ending in the trial of former Officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis in the killing of George Floyd. And on Thursday, bodycam video was released that showed a Chicago police officer fatally shoot a 13-year-old last month less than a second after the boy appeared to drop a handgun, turn toward the officer and begin raising his hands.
One Prude juror praised the prosecution team for helping make sense of the case, telling them: “You guys did amazing work. If it wasn’t for everything that you presented to us, I don’t think anybody would have come up with a decision. You worked very hard and I’m sure nobody took it lightly. It was a very serious case. It’s horrible what happened to him.”