After a young black man dies in police custody – sparking searing protests, rioting in the streets, days of curfew and endless earnest talk about root causes, race and class, the city at a turning point and improving police-community relations – it felt outside the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse today like not much had changed in Baltimore.

Sheriff’s deputies ordered a television cameraman to stop filming and move away from the building. They shouted to protesters that they couldn’t be there, either.

“Sir, I’m giving you a lawful order to move,” the deputy told a journalist from NBC, who appeared to be getting early morning courthouse steps B-roll.

“I have a First Amendment right to be here,” the cameraman replied, taking his time leaving the no-camera area marked on the sidewalk with painted-on blue lines.

This brought a flicker of interest from some of the reporters waiting in line for the first day of the first trial of the six Baltimore police officers charged in connection with the death in police custody of 25-year-old Freddie Gray.

But most didn’t look up from their cellphones.

“Ah, he went into the civil-liberties-free zone,” quipped one of the few who noticed.

On trial was Officer William G. Porter, 26, who prosecutors allege failed to get Gray medical attention after his April 12 arrest in West Baltimore.

Gray, arrested by bicycle police in the Sandtown neighborhood and then taken for a 45-minute ride in a police van, suffered a severe spinal cord injury and died a week later.

Porter is charged with manslaughter, assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office in connection with Gray’s death. He has pleaded not guilty.

Jurors Questioned

Jury selection was the first order of business for Day 1 of the Porter trial, which drew a national and international crowd of media (CNN, The Guardian, der Spiegel) as well as the hometown press.

Ever since State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby, on May 1, announced charges against the officers, intense interest has focused on the juries that will judge them.

The defense has argued, repeatedly, for a change of venue, saying that the jury pool in Baltimore is too tainted by the protests and April 27 rioting.

Standing before Judge Barry G. Williams, the prospective jurors in the Porter case today seemed, on cursory inspection, to be pretty representative of Baltimore. Of the 75 people ushered into the room, 43 were black and 32 were white.

They answered Williams’ questions with their juror number, not name. (Williams previously ruled that they would be anonymous.)

Had any of them not heard of the case, the curfew, the civil settlement? No one spoke up; it appeared that they all had.

Do you have relatives in law enforcement? 12 said they had.

Have you or your immediate family member ever been the victim of a crime, been arrested, charged, convicted or face pending charges? Half of them, 38 people, said yes.

Would you give more or less weight to testimony from a police officer simple because they were an officer? The five who said “yes” included blacks and whites.

Do you have strong feelings about the charges Porter faces? Of the 26 who rose to say yes, 18 were black and 8 white.

Audible in the fourth-floor courtroom (and in the nearby “overflow room” equipped with a small television screen broadcasting the courtroom action) was the sound of a protest leader shouting through a bullhorn and people chanting.

“All night, all day, we will fight for Freddie Gray,” they said.

 Long list of Potential Witnesses

Even though Williams repaired to his chambers, interviewing jurors one-by-one behind closed-doors, some interesting details emerged from today’s proceedings.

Williams said the trial will not go past December 17.

He also read a long list of witnesses – more than 200 people who could potentially be called to testify during the Porter trial. (In a preliminary hearing, Williams last week denied a prosecution motion limiting the number of character witnesses.)

Most of the names were police officers, including former Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts, but a smattering of other well-known personalities were on the list as well – State’s Attorney Mosby, WBAL-TV’s Jayne Miller and even “Don Lemon,” presumably CNN’s Don Lemon.

Other details about the case are well known in Baltimore and beyond, with Gray’s death just one of many high-profile instances of excessive use of force by police officers sparking protests and investigations nationwide.

Porter was not present when Gray was arrested but he was summoned to check on Gray when the van made a stop, according to charging documents.

According to prosecutors, Porter acted negligently by failing to call for medical help after Gray reported he could not breathe. The officer should also have restrained gray in a seat belt in the back of the van, prosecutors say.

Prosecutors have said they are trying Porter first because they want to use him as a material witness in the trials of two other officers, Officer William Goodson, the driver of the van, and Sgt. Alicia White. They are scheduled to go on trial in January.

Attired in a dark suit, French blue shirt and yellow tie, Porter sat quietly next to his attorneys today in the courtroom.

Media Missteps

With heightened attention, but not much new information to chew, courthouse and online discussion about the case often focused on the media’s coverage of it.

Here the verdict was swift: some outlets were found guilty.

Many decried this phrase used in the second sentence of today’s article by CNN’s Ann O’Neil: “The April 19 death of Freddie Gray, the son of an illiterate heroin addict, made him a symbol of the black community’s distrust of police. . . ”

Benjamin Dixon, @TheBpDShow, was aghast. With that language, CNN “simultaneously managed to dehumanize a dead man, his mother, and the entire black community. . . and then pass it off as meh,” he tweeted.

(Vox and Mediaite , among others, jumped on the story.)

[CNN has removed the language, explaining in an “Editor’s Note” at the end of the piece: ‘A reference to Freddie Gray’s mother was removed from this story because it appeared out of context.”]

Morgan State University assistant professor Lawrence Brown was one of several on Twitter chastising news organizations for referring to today’s case as “a Freddie Gray Trial.”

“By constantly repeating ‘Freddie Gray trial’ or ‘Trayvon Martin trial,’ the victim is implicitly put on trial by media & in the courtroom,” Brown (@BmoreDoc) tweeted.

“Freddie Gray is the victim. Freddie Gray had his vertebrae severed & his voicebox crushed. Freddie Gray is dead. He’s not the one on trial.”

Tart Observations

Sitting in the overflow room, meanwhile, where even less was happening, members of the media themselves had some tart observations on the institution they were covering: the Baltimore City Circuit Court.

“Look at the relative size of the portraits of dead white men versus dead black men,” said Roberto Alejandro, of The Afro newspaper.

On the wall behind the television screen, there were two huge oil paintings of former judges, Henry Stockbridge Jr. and James P. Garter.

On a side wall, there was a much smaller simpler painting depicting Clarence M. Mitchell Sr., patriarch of the Baltimore civil rights family that included his son, Clarence M. Mitchell Jr., after whom the courthouse is named.