The prosecutor overseeing the case of a white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo., offered a firm, unapologetic defense on Friday of his role in the case, his unusual handling of grand jury proceedings, and his decision to announce the grand jury’s finding in the evening hours. In his first lengthy interview since a St. Louis County grand jury decided last month not to indict the officer, Darren Wilson, the prosecutor, Robert P. McCulloch, told a radio station that he did not believe events would have been different had he chosen to wait until daylight to reveal the grand jury’s conclusion. Businesses were looted and burned in the St. Louis suburbs in the hours after Mr. McCulloch made the announcement about 8:30 p.m. Central Time on Nov. 24, when the streets were dark and demonstrators had massed outside the Ferguson police headquarters. “There was no good time to announce this,” Mr. McCulloch told KTRS of the case that inflamed a national debate over race and policing. “Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. We knew that very early on.” Mr. McCulloch said that he believed it was important to release the decision “as soon as practicable” after the grand jury reached it earlier in the day, and that he consulted with law enforcement authorities on the choice. Asked whether he wished, in retrospect, that he had waited until the next morning, Mr. McCulloch said no. “I don’t have any regrets about that,” he said. “What occurred afterwards was unfortunate, and there are a variety of reasons that that may have occurred. And some people were bent on destruction regardless of when this was going to be released.” Since the death of the teenager, Michael Brown, in August, Mr. McCulloch has been a focus of anger for protesters who questioned his family’s deep ties to law enforcement and his ability to be fair. On Friday, Mr. McCulloch, the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney for more than two decades, defended the ways he had treated this case differently, like presenting grand jurors with all available evidence and testimony — including witnesses whose testimony was discredited — rather than a simpler, narrower thesis of the case. “My job is not to get an indictment, my job is to seek the truth, and seek justice and do what is right and what’s appropriate in there,” he said, “and that’s what we did in this case and all other cases.” Mr. McCulloch said the grand jury was able to sort out whose testimony to believe, and acknowledged that witnesses he did not believe to be truthful had come before the jurors. Mr. McCulloch said that one female witness, who provided testimony that appeared to bolster Officer Wilson’s account of events, “clearly wasn’t present” when the shooting occurred. In her testimony, the woman whom Mr. McCullough appeared to cite, acknowledged a history of feelings that “others consider to be racist,” gave various reasons for being near the shooting, and described extensive memory problems from a head injury in a car crash. Asked whether he believed the grand jury had given credence to the woman’s testimony, Mr. McCulloch said, “none whatsoever,” and added that the grand jury also heard from other witnesses whose testimony was also in doubt. “It went both directions,” he said. “My determination was to put everybody on and let the grand jurors assess their credibility, which they did,” Mr. McCulloch said. He added at another point: “It’s not as though we just — as some of these pundits have said — we just opened the door and threw everything in and said, ‘Here, do what you’re going to do.’ ” Since Mr. Brown’s death in Ferguson, some have called for special prosecutors in every such case involving officers. Mr. McCulloch dismissed those suggestions, as well as claims that his views were tainted because he has had family members who have been police officers, including his father, who was killed by a kidnapper years ago. He said he had been reviewing police shootings for 20 years and had prosecuted numerous officers for various crimes. “It has not hindered our ability to look at these things,” he said. “Some people have the idea that the police are going to protect the police. There’s nobody who dislikes a dishonest cop more than other cops, because they tarnish everybody with that. And we don’t like dishonest people regardless of their occupation.”
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 07:49:44 +0000
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