Gray, a 25-year-old black man, died a week after suffering a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody on April 12. In three key rulings issued from the bench, he refused to dismiss the charges or recuse Mosby and decided that the case should be split to ensure that each officer gets a fair trial. During a hearing Wednesday, Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams denied a defense motion for the charges to be dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct on the part of State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby. The officers are facing charges in connection with the death of Freddie Gray. Prosecutors previously indicated that they wanted to try Goodson, White, Nero and Miller together in one trial, and Porter and Rice together in a second trial. She said all of the evidence related to what happened to Gray from his arrest to his arrival unresponsive at the Western District police station would be needed to prove reckless endangerment on their part. Protesters are demonstrating outside the downtown Baltimore courthouse where the first hearing in the case of six city police officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray is to get underway. Interim Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said police wanted to treat "a protest like a protest," and that "by and large, that's exactly what happened."  A circuit judge ruled Wednesday that the case against six Baltimore police officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray will go forward in separate trials, with Baltimore State's Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby remaining at the helm of the prosecution. The officers are charged with a range of offenses, from murder to misconduct, as each played a different role in Gray's arrest and transport. Protesters are planning to gather Wednesday outside the Baltimore Circuit Court, where prosecutors and defense attorneys will present arguments on three key issues: whether State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby should recuse herself, whether the officers should be tried together or separately, and whether the charges should be dismissed.
– Written motions finally evolved into verbal arguments this morning in Baltimore, where defense attorneys for two of the six officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray tried to have said charges dismissed and the office of State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby recused from the case—attempts that were both rejected by Judge Barry Williams, the Baltimore Sun reports. The defense attorneys argued, among other things, that Mosby had influenced the jury pool by "[adopting] and [encouraging] the public's cry of 'no justice, no peace'" when she publicly announced the charges against the officers in May. Another complaint by the defense: Mosby's judgment was influenced by her husband serving as councilman for a local district that saw a "disproportionate amount of violence" in the days after Gray's death, the AP reports. Williams called that assertion "condescending" and said while he was "troubled" by some of Mosby's comments during her May 1 news conference, the defendants' right to a fair trial wasn't compromised by her statements, per the AP. The hearing is expected to continue this afternoon to determine whether the trial for the six officers should be split up. (In a unrelated story, members of Freddie Gray's family, including Gray himself, were victims of lead poisoning and may have been misled by a settlement company.)