A New York appeals court has decided to reimpose a murder charge against a state trooper related to a police chase that left an 11-year-old girl dead.
Christopher Baldner has been facing charges for the past four years, since he drove his patrol car into a suspect’s vehicle multiple times, sending the suspect’s pre-teen daughter out of the car and to her death. Although the second-degree murder charge was dropped by a trial judge in February 2023, it was reinstated along with a first-degree reckless endangerment charge on Thursday September 19.
The decision came in a ruling of 4-1 and declared that Baldner engaged in two police chases that were described as “perilous” and “unsanctioned,” both of which resulted in “high-speed collisions.” One of the chases was in December 2020, when 11-year-old Monica Goods was killed in Hudson Valley. The since retired trooper is also facing other charges that remained throughout the case, including manslaughter.
In a September 19 press release from the office of Letitia James, the attorney general for the state of New York, evidence presented by her office was enough for the court to reinstate the dropped murder charge against Baldner.
Specifically, the court determined that the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) had “presented sufficient evidence” to a grand jury hearing the case to prove that the former trooper had engaged in “depraved indifference” during the fatal chase and crash of 2020. The incident occurred at the end of that year, when Baldner was patrolling the New York State Thruway.
He is accused of driving his patrol car into another vehicle driven and occupied by four members of the same family. The impact threw the family’s 11-year-old from the car, killing her. Additionally, Baldner is facing reckless endangerment charges of a separate incident from September 2019, when the former trooper allegedly crashed his patrol car into a passenger vehicle, threatening the lives of three people.
The appellate court made its decision to reinstate the murder charge for young Monica’s death after her father testified to a grand jury. Goods said that Baldner had pulled over the SUV the family was driving, saying they were speeding. They were traveling to visit family for the holidays. The former trooper reportedly used pepper spray inside the vehicle, after arguing with Goods.
The family’s father then drove away, sparking a chase with Baldner, who rammed into the SUV two times. The car flipped several times. But the former trooper apparently informed his supervisor that Goods was the one who crashed into his patrol car several times instead of Baldner ramming the SUV. The trial judge that dismissed the murder charge previously said that the former officer had acted on bad judgment but that the case had not shown enough evidence to prove that he was in the mental state of acting with depraved indifference to human life. This precedent is required to charge someone with second-degree murder.
However, the appeals court disagreed, saying the evidence supported the charges. The one justice who dissented the court’s opinion, John Egan Jr., maintains that Baldner was reckless in his actions but was ultimately behaving in a manner to stop the chase and ensure public safety. He is currently out of custody on bail of $100,000 and has not yet had a trial date scheduled.
