The Missouri prosecutor asking a grand jury to consider charging a Ferguson police officer in the death of an unarmed black teenager is unlikely to bring a case independently if the panel doesn’t return an indictment, a spokesman said.
The fatal shooting of Michael Brown, 18, by Officer Darren Wilson in an Aug. 9 street encounter touched off days of protests and looting in the city north of St. Louis.
It also sparked a national dialog about the intersection of race-relations and law enforcement. The U.S. Justice Department in September said it would undertake its own probe of the almost entirely white Ferguson police force and its relationship with the city’s 21,000 residents, 70 percent of whom are black.
Some eyewitnesses to the shooting said Brown was
killed while raising his hands in surrender. Police maintain he attacked Wilson, who is white, while the officer was in his patrol car. Grand jurors who began reviewing evidence on Aug. 20 are continuing with their deliberations.
St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch said yesterday in a statement that he didn’t expect the panel to complete its work “until mid to late November,” and that his office would announce the outcome at that time.
If the panel declines to indict Wilson, McCulloch won’t file charges on his own or submit the case to another grand jury unless “additional relevant evidence” arises, his spokesman, Ed Magee, said separately yesterday in a phone interview.
All homicide cases in the county are referred to a grand jury, Magee said previously.
Benjamin L. Crump, the Tallahassee, Florida, lawyer for Brown’s family, didn’t immediately respond to an e-mail after regular business hours yesterday seeking comment on Magee’s statement.
Crump previously represented the family of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black teenager shot by Sanford, Florida, neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in March 2012. Zimmerman was acquitted after a trial in 2013.
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