Three officers not indicted in man’s death

A grand jury investigating the police suffocation death of Daniel Prude last year in Rochester, New York, voted 15-5 not to indict the three officers who restrained him, according to transcripts of the proceedings released Friday.

Prosecutors from the state attorney general’s office had asked the grand jury to consider a criminally negligent homicide charge for the officers, who were seen on body camera footage holding and pressing the 41-year-old Black man against the frigid pavement in March 2020 until he stopped breathing.

Prosecutors sought no other charges, according to the transcripts, and told grand jurors that they had the option of choosing not to indict if they believed the officers’ use of force was justified. Five jurors indicated they would have voted to indict at least one of the officers.

“You are not an arm of the prosecution and you are to draw no conclusions about, quote, unquote, we think, feel or anything else,” Jennifer Sommers, the deputy chief of Special Investigations, instructed the grand jury, according to the transcripts.

The grand jury’s decision not to indict the officers was announced at the time it was made in February, but the transcripts of nine days of testimony from witnesses offer a rare window into a process of accountability normally kept under wraps.

Prude was in the throes of a mental health episode when officers encountered him March 23, 2020. Hours after being released from a hospital, where he’d been taken following a mental health arrest, he ran naked from his brother’s home and bashed store windows and ranted about the coronavirus.

“I told the officer my brother ain’t no harm to nobody but himself, don’t kill my brother,” his brother,

Joe Prude testified, according to the transcripts.