Murder charges against former police officer reinstated

An appeals court has reinstated charges of premeditated murder against a former police officer.

Christopher Baldner of Catskill is accused of killing 11-year-old Monica Goods by driving his patrol car into an SUV he was pursuing on the Thruway in Ulster County.

The fatal crash occurred in December 2020.

“While nothing can return Monica Goods to the loving arms of her family, this decision by the court will allow my office to continue our efforts to achieve some semblance of justice for the Goods family,” New York State Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.
Baldner is also charged with reckless endangerment following a similar incident in the same area in 2019.

An Ulster County Court judge dismissed some of the charges after his lawyer argued that there was insufficient evidence to show that Baldner acted with “depraved indifference to human life.”

The prosecution appealed the verdict and the Court of Appeal found that “the defendant chose to end both chases with dangerous, unauthorized collisions at high speed while in possession of a 'malice, viciousness or inhumanity' toward the drivers he was pursuing and their passengers.”