Poll: 65 percent of Americans support decision to charge officers in Freddie Gray’s death

The decision by Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby to charge six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray, including one with second-degree murder, caught many by surprise when it was announced on Friday, as some legal experts say it will be difficult to win convictions in the racially charged case. But a majority of Americans say Mosby’s decision was the right one.

According to a newly released survey from the Pew Research Center, 65 percent support the decision to bring criminal charges against the officers, while just 16 percent disagree. (Eighteen percent of those polled did not offer an opinion, according to Pew.)

And a majority of both blacks and whites agree with the state’s attorney, the poll found. Nearly 8 in 10 African-Americans (78 percent) agree with the decision to charge the officers, while just 7 percent disagree, according to Pew. Among whites, 60 percent support Mosby’s decision, while 21 percent do not.

The survey, conducted May 1-3, found 75 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of independents agreed with the decision. The only demographic that displayed a minority of support for the charges was Republicans. But even then, more Republicans agreed with the decision (45 percent) to bring criminal charges against the officers than did not (33 percent).

The poll found the public is less divided in the Gray case than in other recent high-profile killings of unarmed black men by police. A December 2014 survey found a majority of Americans (57 percent) disagreed with a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to charge police officers in the death of Eric Garner, while just 22 percent agreed.

And the same survey found half of Americans agreed with a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to charge Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, while 27 percent disagreed.

In both the Brown and Garner cases, there was a large racial divide: 90 percent of blacks disagreed with the decision not to indict officers in Garner’s death, compared with 47 percent of whites; in the case of Brown, 80 percent of African-Americans disagreed with the decision, compared with just 23 percent of whites who felt that way. In the Brown case, a majority of whites (67 percent) thought the grand jury made the right decision not to charge Wilson.

Gray, 25, sustained a fatal spine injury while riding in a police van on April 12. He died in the hospital a week later, sparking protests and riots in Baltimore and elsewhere.

“To the people of Baltimore and the demonstrators across America, I heard your call for “No justice, no peace,’” Mosby said. “Your peace is sincerely needed as I work to deliver justice on behalf of this young man.”

While the public generally supports the decision to charge the officers, most Americans “do not have a great deal of confidence in the ongoing investigations into Gray’s death,” Pew found.

Just 13 percent say they have “a great deal of confidence” in the investigations, while 35 percent say they have “a fair amount of confidence.” Forty-four percent say they “have little or no confidence.”