BALTIMORE — A former Baltimore Police officer who resigned from the force after being convicted of reckless endangerment charges while on the job, is taking his case up to the Maryland Supreme Court.
Christopher Nguyen was found guilty of allowing a man to assault another in front of him back in August 2020.
He was convicted in August 2022 and sentenced the following November to 60 days behind bars.
The judge however reconsidered and nixed the jail time partly because Nguyen agreed to resign.
In their September term, Maryland's High Court will consider three specific questions regarding Nguyen's case.
1) Does Maryland common law impose on police officers a general “duty to protect,” a breach of which is enforceable in a criminal prosecution for reckless endangerment or other crimes of omission, and if so, is the duty triggered when one suspect assaults another suspect in an officer’s presence?
2) If Petitioner had a “duty to protect,” was the testimony of other officers that they would have separated or stood between the two suspects legally sufficient to prove that Petitioner, by taking neither action, grossly departed from the standard of conduct that a reasonable, similarly situated police officer would have observed?
3) If the “special relationship” requirement extends to criminal cases involving a police officer-defendant accused of committing reckless endangerment by omission, did the ACM err in concluding that no “special relationship” existed between Petitioner and one of the suspects?
