DOJ will not prosecute former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

The Justice Department announced Wednesday that it will not prosecute former Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of an unarmed black 18-year-old, while also releasing a report faulting the city and its law enforcement for racial bias.

 

In the criminal investigation, federal officials concluded Wilson's actions "do not constitute prosecutable violations under the applicable federal criminal rights statute."

 

Specifically, the DOJ said there was "no evidence" to disprove Wilson's testimony that he feared for his safety, nor was there reliable evidence that Michael Brown had his hands up when he was shot.

 

The report said: "Although there are several individuals who have stated that Brown held his hands up in an unambiguous sign of surrender prior to Wilson shooting him dead, their accounts do not support a prosecution of Wilson.‎ As detailed throughout this report, 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 witness's own prior statements with no explanation, credible or otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time."

 

The decision in the Aug. 9 shooting had been expected, in part because of the high legal standard needed for a federal civil rights prosecution. Wilson, who has said Brown struck him in the face and reached for his gun during a tussle, also had been cleared by a Missouri grand jury in November and later resigned from the department.

 

But the DOJ, in its evaluation of the police department itself, said blacks in Ferguson are disproportionately subject to excessive police force, baseless traffic stops and citations for infractions as petty as walking down the middle of the street.

 

The report also cited "evidence of racial bias" in emails by Ferguson officials. They included one April 2011 email that "depicted President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee"

 

Attention now turns to Ferguson as the city confronts how to fix racial biases that the federal government says are deeply rooted in the police department, court and jail.

 

"Now that our investigation has reached its conclusion, it is time for Ferguson’s leaders to take immediate, wholesale and structural corrective action," Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday.

________

 

High standards, Mr. Holder...

[Valin]

Must read: DOJ report totally vindicates Darren Wilson in Michael Brown shooting
Allahpundit

March 4, 2015

 

I barely glanced at this in posting it to Headlines because I thought I already knew what it would say. Holder’s whining last week about how high the standard is to convict someone of a federal civil rights violation suggested that the tone of the DOJ’s Ferguson report would be more “he’s probably guilty but we just can’t prove it” than “he’s innocent and was railroaded by the media.”

 

My mistake. The DOJ — Eric Holder’s DOJ — is clear as can be that it thinks Wilson was justified in shooting Michael Brown. Rarely do I send you off somewhere to read something at length but trust me on this: Go here, scroll down to the bottom of numbered page 80, and keep reading through page 85. I assumed, I guess, that the report would focus more on attempts to sniff out racism in Wilson’s character (e.g., “Wilson’s friend Joe Schmo said he’d never observed any racist behavior by Wilson towards African-Americans”) as circumstantial evidence that he’d shot Brown out of animus than a careful analysis of the shooting itself replete with commentary on the credibility of various witnesses. What we got instead was a considered argument that not only is Wilson not guilty of a federal civil rights charge, he’s not guilty of a criminal offense of any sort. Had Wilson gone to trial, he could have submitted this as his motion to dismiss and the court might well have torpedoed the indictment before opening arguments. I’m bowled over. It reads like it was written by his own defense attorney.

 

I’ll give you a taste here. Page 82:

 

(Snip)

 

Lots more at the link about how the most damning witnesses against Wilson, the ones who claimed Brown did nothing more than try to surrender, were easily exposed as liars once their stories were compared to the physical evidence and testimony from others. I’m imagining Eric Holder, who went to Ferguson promising to bring the “full resources” of the DOJ to bear on this investigation, rubbing his temples as he read through to the end of what his deputies had concluded. But then, as Ace says, that’s why Holder hedged from the outset by promising to investigate the Ferguson police generally for wider racial bias. He was smart enough to know that a civil-rights investigation of Wilson, which was always a longshot, could blow up on him completely by generating the sort of total acquittal that we’re seeing in today’s report. He needed a political consolation prize. No wonder he released that report yesterday, before this one. Imagine if the “Wilson was innocent” results had dropped today as the sum total of the DOJ’s work so far.

 

Exit question: Would Eric Holder, after reading this report, have brought charges against Wilson if he had been the St. Louis D.A.? Bob McCulloch, the St. Louis prosecuting attorney, ate mountains of crap from the left when he couldn’t obtain an indictment. Does Holder think he could have, or should have?

[SrWoodchuck]

Watched Milwaukee Sheriff David Clark speak on this....what a great man. If only we could clone his integrity, insight & guts.

 

He is a real man of principle, unlike Sharpton, Jackson & USAG "Race-Baitin" Eric Holder of the Dept. of Just-Us.

 

[clearvision]

Well they could not get Wilson, but they got the department for pulling over more blacks than whites on traffic charges... I'm sure there was no correlation with bad tags, expired stuff, no seatbelts, warrants, etc.

[Valin]

Watched Milwaukee Sheriff David Clark speak on this....what a great man. If only we could clone his integrity, insight & guts.

[clearvision]

So the report concludes most of the witnesses made up their stories about the shooting or repeated what they heard from others, or based on what they "thought" the incident would be. Anything going to happen to them for lying and causing this whole fiasco?

[RandyM]

Well they could not get Wilson, but they got the department for pulling over more blacks than whites on traffic charges... I'm sure there was no correlation with bad tags, expired stuff, no seatbelts, warrants, etc.

 

...and absolutely no correlation to the fact that it is a predominately black community (65.2%).

[clearvision]

 

Well they could not get Wilson, but they got the department for pulling over more blacks than whites on traffic charges... I'm sure there was no correlation with bad tags, expired stuff, no seatbelts, warrants, etc.

 

...and absolutely no correlation to the fact that it is a predominately black community (65.2%).

 

 

Man you are showing some disrespect.

[Draggingtree]

Family of slain Missouri teen to file wrongful death lawsuit

BY CAREY GILLAM

Thu Mar 5, 2015 1:31pm EST

 

(Reuters) - Michael Brown's parents will file a wrongful death civil lawsuit against Ferguson, Missouri and the white police officer who shot dead the unarmed 18-year-old black man last August in the St. Louis suburb, a family attorney said on Thursday.

 

"There were other alternatives available to him. He did not have to kill Michael Brown," attorney Daryl Parks said of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

 

The announcement came a day after the U.S. Justice Department cleared Wilson of any civil rights violations in the shooting http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/05/usa-missouri-shooting-idUSL1N0W71S620150305