Ferguson – Some witnesses said Michael Brown had been shot in the back. Another said he was face-down on the ground when officer Darren Wilson finished him off. Still others acknowledged changing their stories to fit published details about the autopsy or admitted that they did not see the shooting at all.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of grand jury documents reveals numerous examples of statements made during the shooting investigation that were inconsistent, fabricated or provably wrong. For one, the autopsies ultimately showed Brown was not struck by any bullets in his back.
Prosecutors exposed these inconsistencies before the jurors, which likely influenced their decision not to indict Wilson in Brown’s death.
Bob McCulloch, the St. Louis County prosecutor, said the grand jury had to weigh testimony that conflicted with physical evidence and conflicting statements by witnesses as it decided whether Wilson should face charges.
“Many witnesses to the shooting of Michael Brown made statements inconsistent with other statements they made and also conflicting with the physical evidence. Some were completely refuted by the physical evidence,” McCulloch said.
The decision Monday not to charge Wilson with any crime set off more violent protests in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson and around the country, fueled by claims that the unarmed black 18-year-old was shot while surrendering to the white officer in the mostly African-American city.
What people thought were facts about the Aug. 9 shooting have become intertwined with what many see as abuses of power and racial inequality in America.
And media coverage of the shooting’s aftermath made it into the grand jury proceedings. Before some witnesses testified, prosecutors showed jurors clips of the same people making statements on TV.
Their inconsistencies began almost immediately after the shooting, from people in the neighborhood, the friend walking with Brown during the encounter and even one woman who authorities suggested probably wasn’t even at the scene at the time.
Jurors also were presented with dueling versions from Wilson and Dorian Johnson, who was walking with Brown during the Aug. 9 confrontation. Johnson painted Wilson as provoking the violence, while Wilson said Brown was the aggressor.
But Johnson also declared on TV, in a clip played for the grand jury, that Wilson fired at least one shot at his friend while Brown was running away: “It struck my friend in the back.”
Johnson held to a variation of this description in his grand jury testimony, saying the shot caused Brown’s body to “do like a jerking movement, not to where it looked like he got hit in his back, but I knew, it maybe could have grazed him, but he definitely made a jerking movement.”
Other eyewitness accounts also were clearly wrong.
One woman, who said she was smoking a cigarette with a friend nearby, claimed she saw a second police officer in the passenger seat of Wilson’s vehicle. When quizzed by a prosecutor, she elaborated: The officer was white, “middle age or young” and in uniform. She said she was positive there was a second officer — even though there was not.
Another woman testified that she saw Brown leaning through the officer’s window “from his navel up,” with his hand moving up and down, as if he were punching the officer. But when the same witness returned to testify again on another day, she said she suffers from mental disorder, has racist views and that she has trouble distinguishing the truth from things she had read online.
Prosecutors suggested the woman had fabricated the entire incident and was not even at the scene the day of the shooting.
Another witness had told the FBI after the shooting that he saw Wilson shoot Brown in the back and then stand over his prone body to finish him off. But in his grand jury testimony, this witness, acknowledged that he had not seen that part of the shooting, and that what he told the FBI was “based on me being where I’m from, and that can be the only assumption that I have.”
The witness, who lives in the predominantly black neighborhood where Brown was killed, also acknowledged that he changed his story to fit details of the autopsy that he had learned about on TV.
“So it was after you learned that the things you said you saw couldn’t have happened that way, then you changed your story about what you seen?” a prosecutor asserted.
“Yeah, to coincide with what really happened,” the witness replied.
Another man, describing himself as a friend of Brown’s, told a federal investigator that he heard the first gunshot, looked out his window and saw an officer with a gun drawn and Brown “on his knees with his hands in the air.” He added: “I seen him shoot him in the head.”
But when later pressed by the investigator, the friend said he had not seen the actual shooting because he was walking down the stairs at the time and instead had heard details from someone in the apartment complex.
“What you are saying you saw isn’t forensically possible based on the evidence,” the investigator told the friend.
Shortly after that, the friend asked if he could leave.
“I ain’t feeling comfortable,” he said.
Why are we letting the facts distort what “really” happened
He punched a cop ! Not just stole a box of cigars ! Brown was a thug and he died like a thug ! The people there are no better. Animals ! Put a fence around the place and let them kill each other. It was just an excuse for them to loot and commit crimes against their own kind. The police showed a lot of restraint last night. The National Guard should have made a bigger presence. The useless POS that cause all the Violence should have been shot down. The Brown family ever pleaded with them ! These are the same people that go around calling each other “Nigga” The justice system worked. It just didn’t work the way these idiots wanted it to work. So what do they do ? Destroy there own hood ! What did those Black businessmen do to deserve there whole life to go up in flames ? They are hard working people. The rest of those people will neverunderstand that. It’s like beating a dead horse.
The govt. has created this racial mess In England there aren’t ghettos of the underclass living all together The govt. pays rent for the low wage earners to live in any part of the city, this lowers the crime rate.
Enough already! Who in their right mind couldn’t tell that this whole shpiel about an “innocent” unarmed black kid taken down by a white cop has been a farce from day one? Brown asked for it from the moment he robbed the shop owner. And yet Sharpton and his ilk continue to glorify him as if he’d been a saint. Lock Sharpton up for inciting the rioters. He in an accessory to the crime of all the looting and destruction perpetrated by the mob of bored good-for-nothings that were just waiting in the wings to pounce.
A Nuchri that is Oiver any of the Sheva Mitzvos Bnei Noach is Chayav Missah.
And that includes the looters.
I guess that arguably they are now considered in Shomayim “The walking dead”…until divine justice catches up with them……
It’s also shameful how much prior time Law-enforcement had to prepare for the day of the grand-jury decision, but still couldn’t manage to be prepared!
When is this country going to come to terms with the fact that blacks also do crimes?
Michael Brown was a thug who was not murderd. Brown committed suicide when he attacked a police officer who was attempting to stop a thief…Brown. He was the master of his own destiny but chose a path of crime. There is a very clear video on the net showing how he stole from a store and used his size to shove around the store clerk. I believe many of the so called witnesses lied after they were coached by the race baiters who capitalized on this whole episode.
To #6 - Your statement was partially wrong. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1988, ruled that police cannot use deadly force on a fleeing felon, when the felon no longer poses a danger to them. Hence, after Brown fled the patrol car (after beating Darren Wilson), he was no longer a danger to the cop, at that point. In fact, Wilson withheld his fire at that point. It was only when Brown turned towards the cop, and began charging at him, in an effort, to beat and kill him, that the cop was legally authorized to use deadly force. In fact, in spite being hit several times, Brown almost got to Wilson. The public doesn’t seem to understand that depending upon someone’s strength, and depending where they are hit, they can be struck numerous times by bullets, and still be a danger, and not stop. In the early 1970’s in Brooklyn, a criminal was hit eleven times by .38 caliber bullets, but still managed to stab a cop.