More doubt cast on Ferguson grand jury decision

[Corrected post on Wednesday evening:   Although I stand by the headline that there is plenty of doubt about the Ferguson grand jury and the process through which they did not return an indictment of Darren Wilson, the substance of the post I wrote last night conflates two different witnesses.    I was relying on an internet source, plus my memory, and "witness #10" and "witness #40" got intermixed.

It was witness #40 who wrote the journal entry and whose entire testimony seems so unreliable.   Witness #10, a male, also seemed questionable in that he changed some of the details in his testimony from one time to another.

It was #10 to whom DA McCulloch referred in his press conference summary.   I apologize for the confusion.   It doesn't change my basic point about the flawed and arguably illegal way DA McCulloch misused the grand jury process, as well as the unreliability of both witnesses #10 and #40.

However, I do endeavor to be accurate in writing this blog, and it pains me to have had misinformation posted on here for nearly 24 hours before I discovered the error.

To be specific:   both witnesses #10 and #40 were ones who said that Michael Brown was charging at the officer when the fatal shots were fired into his head.   It was #40 who wrote the journal and who gave varying reasons for driving to Ferguson that day.   There are reasons to question the reliability of both witnesses;   but it was witness #10, not #40, whom DA McCulloch singled out for mention in his summary at the press conference.

Still, he did also present #40 to the grand jury, after her tertimony and her credibility had been essentially destroyed by the federal investigators -- and he knew that.

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When District Attorney Robert McCulloch held his now-infamous press conference to announce "no indictment" of police officer Darren Wilson, he emphasized the testimony of "witness #10."   

Having talked about the many contradictory accounts from other witnesses, some of which did not fit with the physical evidence, he singled out #10, whose description of Brown charging at Wilson "like a football player, head down" closely corroborated Wilson's account.

Now a report from "The Smoking Gun" is circulating that claims the testimony of witness #10 may be unreliable, perhaps even false.  She has claimed that she wrote her account in her journal just after witnessing the shooting, but this report says that she did not even mention a journal when she first spoke with police -- four weeks after the incident.   In addition, she has a history of having perviously inserted herself into another case by lying to the police, and her story about why she was in Ferguson changed.

Officers were skeptical of why a resident of St. Louis happened to be in Ferguson that morning.   At one point, she told them she had made the 30 mile trip "to better understand African-Americans."   At another time, she said she had gone to visit an old classmate in Ferguson and saw the incident when she stopped to ask directions.

In the four week period before she contacted police with her story, she had posted comments on her Facebook supportive of officer Wilson.

A cross-examining attorney would have easily destroyed the credibility of such an unreliable witness.    And yet McCulloch cites her testimony over that of other witnesses who seem far more credible -- simply because #10 corroborates Wilson's version of what happened.   This is exactly what was so wrong with this whole process.   It was not a trial, there was no judge, no adversarial attorney to challenge such questionable witnesses as a means to getting the truth.  And yet McCulloch -- displaying his pro-Wilson bias -- presents it as if it had been a trial with a verdict that cleared Wilson of wrong-doing.

The person was so right who described McCulloch's press conference as sounding like a defense attorney's summing up -- rather than the impartial report of the District Attorney.

This does not prove that Wilson should have been gound guilty.  What it does show is that there should have been a trial to resolve these and a myriad of other questions.   There is good reason why trials are set up as they are:   rules of evidence, cross-examination of witnesses by opposing attorneys, and a judge to ensure fairness and correct instructions of the law -- none of which occurred.

Ralph