Undisclosed, the killing of Freddie Gray episode five is brought to you by stamps.com,

Blue Apron, and Lettote. Make sure you listen in for the spots later in the show and support

our sponsors because they support us. And a reminder to listeners that the research

analysis and opinions of the investigators, journalists, academics, and lawyers who you'll hear

on the program about the circumstances surrounding Freddie Gray's killing are just that.

Research, analysis, and opinions. We encourage listeners to reach their own conclusions and

to vigorously debate our conclusions with us. Enjoy the program.

The successful reconstruction and prosecution of a crime, any crime, depends on a few things.

Documenting the details quickly and accurately, capturing witness statements as soon as possible,

and of course, gathering any and all physical evidence in a way that doesn't taint it.

In other words, the successful prosecution of a crime depends largely on how the police

handle things immediately after the commission of a crime, meaning the prosecutors have to rely on

the police to get these basic things right so they can then build a criminal case against the

defendants. It gets much trickier though when the defendants of the police themselves,

like in the death of Freddie Gray. So it was a job of the Baltimore City police to collect the

information and evidence to not only help investigators figure out how Freddie was injured and died,

but also ultimately help prosecute their own officers. How and when they collected and documented

the evidence could help make or break the state's case against them. Now it's important to distinguish

sources of evidence from actual physical evidence itself. In this case, the sources were a handful.

Witness statements, police statements and documentation, the police van, the CCTV cameras,

and the autopsy report. And the actual physical evidence pulled from those sources was even less.

Blood from inside the van and a knife allegedly found on Freddie Gray. Today we examine the

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