Darren Wilson Is Cleared of Rights Violations in Ferguson Shooting
By MATT APUZZO and ERIK ECKHOLM
New York Times
MARCH 4, 2015
WASHINGTON — Offering the most definitive account yet of the shooting of an unarmed black teenager that stirred racially charged protests across the country, the Justice Department has cleared a Ferguson, Mo., police officer of civil rights violations in the death last August of Michael Brown.
The decision, announced on Wednesday, ends a lengthy investigation into the shooting last August, in which the officer, Darren Wilson shot and killed Mr. Brown in the street as he tried to stop him for a possible theft. Several witnesses said Mr. Brown, 18, had his hands up in surrender when he died, leading to violent clashes in Ferguson and nationwide protest chants of “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
But federal agents and civil rights prosecutors rejected that story, just as a state grand jury did in November when it decided not to indict Mr. Wilson. In an 86-page report released Wednesday that details the testimony of more than 40 witnesses — and evaluates their credibility and consistency with forensic evidence — the Justice Department largely backed up Mr. Wilson’s account and said there was no basis for criminal charges.
In a scathing report released Wednesday, the Justice Department concluded that the Ferguson Police Department had been routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents.
Mr. Wilson, who left the Ferguson Police Department late last year, said that Mr. Brown had fought with him, reached for his gun, and later charged at him, making him fear for his life.
“There is no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson’s stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety,” the report said. At the same time, it concluded that the witnesses who claimed that Mr. Brown was surrendering were not credible.
“Some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witnesses’ own prior statements with no explanation,” the report said.
“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,” it added.
“Those witness accounts stating that Brown never moved back toward Wilson could not be relied upon in a prosecution because their accounts cannot be reconciled with the DNA bloodstain evidence and other credible witness accounts.”
In a written statement, Mr. Brown’s parents, Lesley McSpadden and Michael Brown Sr., said they were saddened and disappointed with the news that “the killer of our son wouldn’t be held accountable for his actions.”
But the couple also praised a second Justice Department report released on Wednesday that found systemic discrimination against African Americans by the Ferguson Police Department and municipal court.
“We are encouraged that the DOJ will hold the Ferguson Police Department accountable for the pattern of racial bias and profiling they found in their handling of interactions with people of color,” the statement said.
The report on the shooting provides support for the grand jury’s decision not to bring murder or manslaughter charges and it appears to vindicate the St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, who was attacked by some for failing to steer the jury toward an indictment.
Mr. McCulloch took the unusual strategy of presenting the grand jury with reams of evidence, including contradictory eyewitness testimony. He then released the entire proceedings to the public, something rarely done.
That jumble of grand jury evidence did bolster important parts of Mr. Wilson’s account. DNA and blood samples indicated that Mr. Brown had reached into the officer’s police car, as Mr. Wilson had testified, and two shots were fired in a struggle.
That Mr. Brown, slightly wounded, ran away and then turned, with Mr. Wilson chasing him, was also firmly established. And a trail of bloodstains seemed to prove that Mr. Brown was moving toward the officer even after being seriously wounded by an initial volley of bullets.
But to some critics, the conflicting witness accounts left questions unanswered. Did Mr. Brown raise his hands to surrender or was he charging in a rage, as the officer maintained? In his final moment, when Mr. Wilson shot him fatally in the head, was he staggering and falling or continuing his menacing charge?
The Justice Department’s report includes a description of every witness’s accounts, which were sometimes offered in multiple interviews with St. Louis county police and the FBI, and judged their likely credibility in court.
Of 41 witnesses described, the Justice Department labeled eight of them as credible because their statements were consistent over time, consistent with other accounts and consistent with the physical evidence. One of these eight was Mr. Wilson’s fiancée, with whom he spoke minutes after the shooting.
No witnesses had accounts that were both credible and pointed toward Mr. Wilson’s guilt, the investigators wrote. Nine witnesses did not fully contradict or corroborate the officer, while the accountes of 24 others were dissected and shown, the federal investigators said, to lack credibility. These included witnesses who admitted they had not actually seen the events.
“Our investigation has been both fair and rigorous from the start” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a news conference on Wednesday afternoon. It was conducted independently from the investigation by the local police, he said, and included the canvassing of more than 300 residences to locate additional witnesses.
“The facts do not support the filing of criminal charges against Officer Darren Wilson in this case,” he said. For those who feel otherwise, he said, “I urge you to read this report in full.”
Some of the witnesses whose accounts supported Mr. Wilson said they had been afraid to come forth before or tell the truth because they feared reprisals from the enraged community.
Among them was a 31-year old black woman who had been standing on her brother’s balcony at the time of the shooting. Her initial account to investigators, in which she said that she saw Mr. Wilson fire shots into Mr. Brown’s back as he lay dead on the street, was inconsistent with the autopsy findings.
When federal investigators challenged her, she admitted lying, explained to the FBI that, “You’ve gotta live the life to know it” and said she had been afraid to contradict stories that Mr. Brown had been trying to surrender.
She then “admitted that she saw Brown running toward Wilson, prompting Wilson to yell ‘freeze,’” the report stated, and said that “it appeared to her that Wilson’s life was in danger.” But when local authorities later tried to serve this witness a subpoena to appear before the grand jury, the report said, “she blockaded her door with a couch.”
From the beginning, civil rights charges represented a difficult hurdle for prosecutors to clear. The law requires prosecutors to prove that Mr. Wilson willfully violated Mr. Brown’s civil rights when he shot him. Courts have given officers wide latitude when deciding when to use deadly force if they feel their lives are in danger.
The shooting report is separate from a broader civil rights investigation that found widespread civil rights abuses by the Ferguson Police Department.
Matt Apuzzo reported from Washington, and Erik Eckholm from New York.
New York Times
MARCH 4, 2015
WASHINGTON — Offering the most definitive account yet of the shooting of an unarmed black teenager that stirred racially charged protests across the country, the Justice Department has cleared a Ferguson, Mo., police officer of civil rights violations in the death last August of Michael Brown.
The decision, announced on Wednesday, ends a lengthy investigation into the shooting last August, in which the officer, Darren Wilson shot and killed Mr. Brown in the street as he tried to stop him for a possible theft. Several witnesses said Mr. Brown, 18, had his hands up in surrender when he died, leading to violent clashes in Ferguson and nationwide protest chants of “Hands up, don’t shoot.”
But federal agents and civil rights prosecutors rejected that story, just as a state grand jury did in November when it decided not to indict Mr. Wilson. In an 86-page report released Wednesday that details the testimony of more than 40 witnesses — and evaluates their credibility and consistency with forensic evidence — the Justice Department largely backed up Mr. Wilson’s account and said there was no basis for criminal charges.
In a scathing report released Wednesday, the Justice Department concluded that the Ferguson Police Department had been routinely violating the constitutional rights of its black residents.
Mr. Wilson, who left the Ferguson Police Department late last year, said that Mr. Brown had fought with him, reached for his gun, and later charged at him, making him fear for his life.
“There is no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson’s stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety,” the report said. At the same time, it concluded that the witnesses who claimed that Mr. Brown was surrendering were not credible.
“Some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witnesses’ own prior statements with no explanation,” the report said.
“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,” it added.
“Those witness accounts stating that Brown never moved back toward Wilson could not be relied upon in a prosecution because their accounts cannot be reconciled with the DNA bloodstain evidence and other credible witness accounts.”
In a written statement, Mr. Brown’s parents, Lesley McSpadden and Michael Brown Sr., said they were saddened and disappointed with the news that “the killer of our son wouldn’t be held accountable for his actions.”
But the couple also praised a second Justice Department report released on Wednesday that found systemic discrimination against African Americans by the Ferguson Police Department and municipal court.
“We are encouraged that the DOJ will hold the Ferguson Police Department accountable for the pattern of racial bias and profiling they found in their handling of interactions with people of color,” the statement said.
The report on the shooting provides support for the grand jury’s decision not to bring murder or manslaughter charges and it appears to vindicate the St. Louis County prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, who was attacked by some for failing to steer the jury toward an indictment.
Mr. McCulloch took the unusual strategy of presenting the grand jury with reams of evidence, including contradictory eyewitness testimony. He then released the entire proceedings to the public, something rarely done.
That jumble of grand jury evidence did bolster important parts of Mr. Wilson’s account. DNA and blood samples indicated that Mr. Brown had reached into the officer’s police car, as Mr. Wilson had testified, and two shots were fired in a struggle.
That Mr. Brown, slightly wounded, ran away and then turned, with Mr. Wilson chasing him, was also firmly established. And a trail of bloodstains seemed to prove that Mr. Brown was moving toward the officer even after being seriously wounded by an initial volley of bullets.
But to some critics, the conflicting witness accounts left questions unanswered. Did Mr. Brown raise his hands to surrender or was he charging in a rage, as the officer maintained? In his final moment, when Mr. Wilson shot him fatally in the head, was he staggering and falling or continuing his menacing charge?
The Justice Department’s report includes a description of every witness’s accounts, which were sometimes offered in multiple interviews with St. Louis county police and the FBI, and judged their likely credibility in court.
Of 41 witnesses described, the Justice Department labeled eight of them as credible because their statements were consistent over time, consistent with other accounts and consistent with the physical evidence. One of these eight was Mr. Wilson’s fiancée, with whom he spoke minutes after the shooting.
No witnesses had accounts that were both credible and pointed toward Mr. Wilson’s guilt, the investigators wrote. Nine witnesses did not fully contradict or corroborate the officer, while the accountes of 24 others were dissected and shown, the federal investigators said, to lack credibility. These included witnesses who admitted they had not actually seen the events.
“Our investigation has been both fair and rigorous from the start” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a news conference on Wednesday afternoon. It was conducted independently from the investigation by the local police, he said, and included the canvassing of more than 300 residences to locate additional witnesses.
“The facts do not support the filing of criminal charges against Officer Darren Wilson in this case,” he said. For those who feel otherwise, he said, “I urge you to read this report in full.”
Some of the witnesses whose accounts supported Mr. Wilson said they had been afraid to come forth before or tell the truth because they feared reprisals from the enraged community.
Among them was a 31-year old black woman who had been standing on her brother’s balcony at the time of the shooting. Her initial account to investigators, in which she said that she saw Mr. Wilson fire shots into Mr. Brown’s back as he lay dead on the street, was inconsistent with the autopsy findings.
When federal investigators challenged her, she admitted lying, explained to the FBI that, “You’ve gotta live the life to know it” and said she had been afraid to contradict stories that Mr. Brown had been trying to surrender.
She then “admitted that she saw Brown running toward Wilson, prompting Wilson to yell ‘freeze,’” the report stated, and said that “it appeared to her that Wilson’s life was in danger.” But when local authorities later tried to serve this witness a subpoena to appear before the grand jury, the report said, “she blockaded her door with a couch.”
From the beginning, civil rights charges represented a difficult hurdle for prosecutors to clear. The law requires prosecutors to prove that Mr. Wilson willfully violated Mr. Brown’s civil rights when he shot him. Courts have given officers wide latitude when deciding when to use deadly force if they feel their lives are in danger.
The shooting report is separate from a broader civil rights investigation that found widespread civil rights abuses by the Ferguson Police Department.
Matt Apuzzo reported from Washington, and Erik Eckholm from New York.
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