Murder charge reinstated for former state trooper

An appellate court has reinstated a second-degree murder charge against a former state trooper.

Christopher Baldner of Catskill is accused of killing Monica Goods, 11, after ramming his trooper car into an SUV he was chasing on the Thruway in Ulster County.

The deadly crash happened back in December of 2020.

“While nothing can return Monica Goods to her family’s loving arms, this decision from the court will enable my office to continue our efforts to seek some semblance of justice for the Goods family,” New York State Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement.
Baldner also faces a reckless endangerment charge from a similar incident back in 2019 in the same area.

An Ulster County Court judge dismissed some of the charges, after his attorney had argued that the evidence was not sufficient to show that Baldner offered with “depraved indifference to human life.”

Prosecutors appealed the decision, and the appeals court found that “defendant decided to end both pursuits with perilous, unsanctioned high-speed collisions while possession of a “wickedness, evil or inhumanity” against the drivers he was pursuing and their passengers.