Excerpt: Darren Wilson, the white police officer whose fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, led to months of unrest and revived a debate on race and law enforcement in the US, will not face federal criminal charges."
Michael Brown, who was shot dead in 2014 by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. (photo: Facebook)
05 March 15
arren Wilson, the white police officer whose fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, led to months of unrest and revived a debate on race and law enforcement in the US, will not face federal criminal charges.
The Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that after a six-month inquiry it has concluded no civil rights charges should be brought against Wilson for killing Michael Brown. A grand jury in St Louis decided last November not to indict Wilson on state charges.
“There is no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson’s stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety,” said the Department of Justice’s report, which rejected an account of the shooting long cited by protesters under the rallying cry “hands up – don’t shoot”.
Eric Holder, the US attorney general, said at a press conference in Washington: “Michael Brown’s death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of officer Wilson.”
The decision ended the second half of a politically-charged investigation into Wilson’s shooting of Brown on 9 August following an altercation in a residential side-street. While Wilson insisted he acted in self-defence, protesters cited some witness accounts that said Brown was fleeing and had his hands up in surrender.
An attorney for Wilson said the Justice Department’s decision amounted to an “exoneration” of the former Ferguson officer. “Obviously the reaction is one of relief,” Neil Bruntrager told CBS. “It’s been a long road for him. Now he needs to get on with his life.”
The decision was widely expected by protesters who allege that Brown’s killing was a criminal act. Prosecutors would have faced the hurdle of proving that Wilson deliberately committed a racially motivated hate crime.
Holder reminded those disappointed by the inquiry’s conclusion that he had promised during a visit to Ferguson “not that we would arrive at particular outcome, but that we would pursue the facts, wherever they might lead”.
Describing the federal inquiry as “both fair and rigorous from the start”, he said its conclusions were “supported by the facts we have found”.
“I urge you to read this report in full,” Holder said.
Bob McCulloch, the St Louis County prosecutor who oversaw the controversial state grand jury process on Brown’s death, said the Justice Department’s findings confirmed those of the county-level inquiry, but said: “I don’t feel any need to feel vindicated about anything”.
McCulloch stressed that both investigations had concluded there was not probable cause to prosecute Wilson. “Those who say, well, charges should be filed just so we can have a trial – we just don’t operate that way in this country,” he told reporters at his offices in Clayton.
In a statement issued by their attorneys, Brown’s parents said they were “saddened by this decision”, adding that it meant “that the killer of our son wouldn’t be held accountable for his actions”.
Prosecutors might have charged Wilson under a 19th-century federal law – known technically as Section 242 of Title 18 – that makes it a crime for anyone acting with government authority to “wilfully deprive a person of a right or privilege protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
Evidence that Wilson intentionally victimised Brown because of his race would have been needed for civil rights officials at the Justice Department to prosecute the 28-year-old officer, who quit his job at the Ferguson police department following the state grand jury’s decision.
The same high bar was in place for a two-year investigation into the 2012 killing in Florida of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watchman. The Justice Department said last month that Zimmerman would not be charged.
In any case, several findings by FBI investigators published on Wednesday matched those of county police, and sharply challenged the version of the 9 August shooting given by supporters of Brown’s family, who alleged that he was shot dead after angering Wilson by refusing an instruction to move from the road on to the sidewalk.
The federal investigators reported that they, too, found that several young witnesses changed their accounts of what they saw, or recanted evidence altogether and admitted they had not been there. McCulloch complained of the same problem in November.
Wednesday’s report said minor injuries to Wilson’s face and the officer’s DNA being found on one of Brown’s hands indicated that the 18-year-old had, indeed, reached into Wilson’s patrol vehicle during a struggle between the two.
The investigators also agreed that blood trail showed that after fleeing the confrontation, Brown “turned around and came back toward Wilson”. The officer alleged that he fired when Brown refused to stop charging at him. While witness accounts differed over whether Brown was stumbling after being shot or moving threateningly, federal officials sided with the latter.
“Although some witnesses state that Brown held his hands up at shoulder level with his palms facing outward for a brief moment, these same witnesses describe Brown then dropping his hands and ‘charging’ at Wilson,” the report added.
Wilson’s supporters accused Holder of burying news that no charges would be brought on the same day his officials accused Ferguson police of a pattern of racial bias in a sweepingly critical report after a review of the department’s practices.
“The FBI appeared to conclude their inquiries into officer Wilson months ago,” said Ron Hosko, the president of the law enforcement legal defense fund. “Yet the Attorney General seems to have delayed the announcement of this decision despite knowing the conclusions.”
Protests erupted on the streets of Ferguson, a small northern suburb of St Louis, after Brown’s death in August. For successive nights, heavily armed police clashed with demonstrators, firing teargas and rubber bullets to drive hundreds of people out of the centre of the town. A night of rioting, looting and arson followed November’s grand jury decision.
