A St. Louis County grand jury chose not to indict Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown Jr., announced St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch on Monday, November 24 in a courtroom in Clayton, the county seat.
The 12 jury members heard more than 70 hours of testimony from about 60 people, including Canfield Green residents who witnessed the shooting on August 9.
Police officials have said that Brown and Wilson had an altercation inside the police car, before the teen reached for Wilson’s weapon. However, according to some eyewitnesses, the teen had surrendered at the time of the fatal shooting, regardless of whatever altercation preceded it.
McCulloch said witnesses had different opinions of where Brown’s hands were – on his stomach, at his sides or up in the air – when he was shot and killed.
In his testimony, Wilson told the grand jury that he initially encountered Brown and his friend, Dorian Johnson, walking in a street and told them to move to the sidewalk. Wilson said he noticed that Brown had a handful of cigars, and realized that the men were suspects in a theft at a convenience store reported minutes earlier.
Johnson told the grand jury that he was “shocked” when Brown stole cigarillos from the convenience store and was not surprised when police came after them. Wilson originally passed the two young men, telling them, “Get the (expletive) on the sidewalk,” Johnson said.
Brown remained silent while Johnson spoke to the officer, he said. “I wasn’t loud with the officer or anything like that,” Johnson testified. “I was just telling him where we were headed.” But then Wilson reversed his vehicle and opened his door suddenly, hitting Brown and himself slightly, he said. Wilson closed the door and then reached outside of the car and grabbed Brown by the neck, Johnson said. He saw no punches thrown; it was more like an intense “tug of war.”
He heard Wilson say, “I’ll shoot,” but he never saw Brown grab the officer’s gun.
Wilson testified on the car wrestling: “I tried to hold his right arm and use my left hand to get out to have some type of control and not be trapped in my car anymore. And when I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan … That’s just how big he felt and how small I felt just from grasping his arm.”
Wilson said that the two young men ran from him and then turned back around. When Brown “charged” him, Wilson said, he shot him.
After the initial shots in the car, Johnson said he and Brown took off running. When Wilson shot again, he said Brown stopped running and turned to face the officer.
“At that time Big Mike’s hands was up, but not so much in the air because he had been struck,” Johnson said.
Johnson said Brown told Wilson, “I don’t have a gun,” but Wilson was “still mad, he still has his angry face. ‘I don’t have a gun.’ … And before he can say the second sentence or before he can even get it out, that’s when the several more shots came.”
Johnson was asked if Brown ran at the officer, and he said he did not because he was already shot and hurting.
McCulloch said many of the witnesses most familiar to the public gave testimony that conflicted with the physical evidence or changed their testimony, whereas witnesses whose testimony was found more credible by the grand jurors have never been interviewed by the media.
Brown’s parents, Lesley McSpadden and Michael Brown Sr., were given a phone call on Monday briefly alerting them to the grand jury’s announcement, according to an MSNBC report. “While we understand that many others share our pain, we ask that you channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change,” the Brown family said in a statement.
President Barack Obama quoted their statement in remarks from the White House after the decision was announced, but a small element in the Ferguson protest crowd had already started setting fires and trying to destroy police cars as Obama was speaking.
Wilson is white, and Brown was black. The Ferguson protest movement is diverse, but it focuses on a national pattern of white police officers shooting and killing black males who are unarmed (or where there is controversy over whether they were armed). The group that has rallied around the accused police shooters is virtually all-white.
This made the racial composition of the grand jury an issue of concern. The grand jury who heard the testimony in the Michael Brown Jr. case consists of nine white and three black members. Seven are men and five are women. Nine of the 12 jurors had to agree on charges to hand down an indictment. Those charges could have included murder in the first degree or second degree, or voluntary or involuntary manslaughter.
Throughout the protest movement, the chant, “Black lives matter,” has been a dominant thread. The movement has united “fair-minded citizens who want a society that guarantees the human and civil rights for all, not just those with the right skin color or the resources to pay for it,” said Jamala Rogers, a longtime activist and a leader with the group Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression.
“On the other side are those who feel like the status quo that upholds white rights must be protected at all costs,” she said.
Police said there were 21 fires in Ferguson on Monday night. Two police cars completely burned, and 10 were damaged. Three officers were injured.
Gov. Jay Nixon said 700 National Guardsmen were in the St. Louis area, but many people questioned why they were not stationed in Ferguson. Nixon said he would have 2,200 members of the National Guard deployed on Tuesday night.
“I’m sorry to the community of Ferguson,” Captain Ron Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol said at a press conference on Tuesday, November 25. “That was not fair to this community and this nation.”
