Prosecutors Declined — Again — To Fee The Ferguson Police Officer Who Shot Michael Brown
Almost six years after Michael Brown was once shot and killed by a Ferguson police officer, sparking months of protests in the Missouri city and across the US, a county prosecutor announced Thursday that his place of job is no longer any longer going to charge the officer after reinvestigating the case.
The white officer, Darren Wilson, fatally shot Brown, 18, on Aug. 9, 2014, while attempting to detain the Dim teen for his role in a theft at a comfort retailer. In November 2014, a expansive jury cleared Wilson of felony prices after the officer testified that he had feared for his lifestyles, though Brown was once unarmed.
“Although this case represents one in all the most principal moments in St. Louis’s historic past, the quiz for this place of job was once a straightforward one: Might perhaps per chance we show past an cheap doubt that when Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown, he committed assassinate or manslaughter below Missouri legislation?” St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell said for the interval of a press convention. “The resolution to that quiz is no longer any.”
Several witnesses, including Brown’s pal Dorian Johnson, who was once with the teen when he died, claimed Brown had his hands up when he was once shot to loss of life, inspiring the “hands up, accomplish no longer shoot” chant at rallies across the country. A 2015 federal report later came across that the proof supported Wilson’s yarn and that the “stylish myth that Wilson shot Brown execution-model as he held up his hands in surrender” lacked credibility.
Thursday’s announcement comes amid global protests in opposition to police brutality and anti-Dim racism, sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The St. Louis County prosecutor, Bell, who came about of job in January 2019, said his place of job spent five months reviewing the case on the build a question to of Brown’s family. But after reexamining thousands of pages of deem statements, forensic reports, and assorted proof, his place of job felt that there wasn’t ample to bring prices.
“I do know right here’s no longer the result they bear been buying for and that their effort will proceed forever,” Bell said. “Our investigation does no longer exonerate Darren Wilson. The build a question as to whether we can show a case at trial is assorted than clearing him of any and all wrongdoing.”
He added that there bear been “so many aspects at which” Wilson can bear “handled the topic in a different plot — and if he had, Michael Brown could well serene be alive.”