[caption id="attachment_112400" align="alignright" width="294"] Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Dr. Michael Baden points to an autopsy diagram showing where the gun shots hit Michael Brown next to family attorneys Benjamin Crump, left, and Daryl Parks during a press conference at the Greater St. Marks Family Church on Aug. 18, 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri.[/caption]
A grand jury will begin hearing evidence tomorrow in the police shooting death of Ferguson, Missouri, teenager Michael Brown, as violent clashes continued in the St. Louis suburb.
A grand jury will start hearing from witnesses about the shooting that left Brown, 18, dead, Ed Magee, a spokesman for St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch, said in a telephone interview today. The shooting sparked more than a week of violent protests in Ferguson.

The state grand-jury probe comes as federal officials are starting a civil-rights’ investigation into the death of the unarmed black teenager. President Barack Obama has ordered U.S. Attorney Eric Holder to go to Ferguson and meet with FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers handling the criminal probe into the circumstances of Brown’s death.

Police fired tear gas at protesters and 31 people were arrested in Ferguson last night after demonstrators refused to leave a section of the city that has been the epicenter of protests. Protesters hurled bottles and Molotov cocktails, and gunshots were fired, wounding two people, according to police. The victims, both male, weren’t shot by police, authorities said.

Brown was killed Aug. 9 by Darren Wilson, a white Ferguson police officer, after being stopped on a city street, Police Chief Thomas Jackson said earlier.
Officer’s Testimony
Wilson will be offered the opportunity to testify before the grand jury, Magee said. The spokesman added it’s not clear how long the proceedings will take or how many witnesses may be called.

Greg Kloeppel, a lawyer for Wilson, declined in a telephone interview to comment on the grand jury examination of the case. Kloeppel is chief legal counsel for a local chapter of the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police.

Evidence is still being collected and the probe is “far from being finished,” so there’s no timeline for the case, Magee said yesterday.

The grand jury must decide whether Wilson violated the law by shooting the teenager and whether he should face charges ranging from manslaughter to murder, said Gordon Ankney, a former assistant county prosecutor who now handles corporate litigation and criminal defense work in St. Louis.

“It will all come down to what the evidence shows and I think the authorities are still in the process of gathering scientific analyses of that evidence,” the former prosecutor said.
Three Autopsies
Three separate autopsies were conducted on Brown’s body. Forensic examinations were done by county officials and a pathologist hired by Brown’s family. A federal government autopsy was conducted yesterday.

The pathologist working for the family said yesterday the teenager was shot six times in the incident. The examination, conducted by former New York City chief medical examiner Michael Baden, shows at least two gunshot wounds to Brown’s head.

Those shots, one of which exited around his eye, probably caused fatal damage to the brain, Baden said yesterday at a news conference in St. Louis.

The separate examinations shouldn’t cause any evidentiary problems, Ankney said.

“I don’t think multiple autopsies will complicate things,” Ankney said. “Things such as entry and exit wounds are pretty easy to establish. It’s trying to interpret what those wounds mean that can lead to debate.”

By Bloomberg

 

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