During his November 24 press conference announcing that Darren Wilson would not be indicted in the shooting death of Michael Brown, Bob McCulloch made clear that the eyewitnesses were not a trustworthy lot. Among other things, he said:
Some [witnesses] even admitted that they did not witness the event at all but merely repeated what they heard in the neighborhood or others, or assumed had happened.
That quote can be found at the 5:06 mark of the video posted at the end of this diary. Because I haven't yet read all the witness testimony in the grand jury transcripts, I'll have to take McCulloch's reference to "some" witnesses at face value. So far, I've only found one and that one is important.
A closer look at the testimony by and about this witness gives lie to McCulloch's condemnation. There are two reasons why: The first is that the circumstances surrounding the revelation that a witness passed on someone else's observation actually strengthen the prosecutor's case. The second is the inadvertent admission by the prosecutors that they had two different standards for witness testimony.
For purposes of this report, I'm going to call the two people involved the Witness and the Girlfriend.
Most of the story is told in Volume 11 beginning on page 6 when the Witness took the stand to give his testimony. Kathi Alizadeh did the questioning. Please note that the page numbers cited may not be the exclusive source for the accompanying statements. In most of the transcripts, especially of eyewitness testimony, the same points were repeated two or more times.
The Witness's Account
The Witness is a Canfield Green resident. He had left for work before 7:00 a.m. and returned around 11:00. Vol. 11, p. 12. He testified that when he got home, his Girlfriend was asleep in their bedroom. Id., p. 13. At the time of the shooting, he was in his living room playing video games. Id.
The Witness heard a succession of three or four shots. Vol. 11, p. 14. He then went to his living room window, Id., p. 16, 25, where he could see Michael Brown. His view of Brown was at an angle; he could see Brown's back and right side. Vol. 11, p. 20. Here is what he observed:
I saw a person holding hisself around here and had a hand up in the air and was, it looked like he was going to a knee or on one knee. 1 think he was going down to his second knee and he was falling. And from that point is when I seen him get shot and seen his head like jerk back and I seen him do that like three times and that's when he just fell face first.
Vol. 11, p. 17-18. Alizadeh has the Witness stand to demonstrate where Brown's hands and arms were. Brown's left arm was "a little below [his] chest ... almost reaching around to [his] rib cage on [his] right side". Id., p. 21. (Other witnesses similarly described one or both of Brown's arms moving across his chest area.) The description of Brown's right arm is less clear in the transcript; it appears his arm was out from his body at a 90-degree angle, in front of him, with his fingers "facing forward and up a bit." Id. at 21-22. Brown had one knee on the ground at the time likely because, as the Witness said, "he was on his way down." Id., p. 23.
The Witness was unable to see who was doing the shooting from his vantage point. Vol. 11, p. 18. The Witness saw someone, presumably Dorian Johnson, running from the area but he had no idea of that person's connection with the shooting. Rather, he assumed it was merely someone running from the gunshots. Id., p. 19-20.
The Witness also saw the construction workers, sometimes called contractors. Vol. 11, p. 16. He saw them leave very shortly after the shooting. Id., p. 29. Compare this with the contractor's testimony; he says he and his fellow worker left within "a couple of minutes" or "three minutes" after the shooting. Vol. 12, p. 213.
The Witness described the second series of gunshots, which he said happened when Michael Brown's knee was on the ground:
Witness: When I heard the gunshots, the same time I'm hearing the gunshots, I seen his head jerk back and he came back forward and he jerked back again and that's when after that he fell face first on the ground.
Alizadeh: Okay. And so what were his arms doing during this second series of gunshots?
Witness: During the second series, this is when his arms kind of just fell.
Alizadeh: Okay.
Witness: When he jerked back[,] at the time of him jerking back, his arms are falling and that's when the shooting stop (sic), he fell on the ground.
Aizadeh: Okay. And after he fell on the ground, did you see him move anymore?
Witness: No.
Vol. 11, p. 26-27. When the Witness saw police cars arriving on the scene almost immediately after Brown fell, he called to his Girlfriend that the police just shot someone. Id., p. 27.
There is more and as with all the eyewitness testimony, I encourage everyone to read the testimony in full. That said, the foregoing is sufficient for the present purposes.
The Prosecutor's Challenge
The prosecutors actively sought to discredit eyewitnesses to the shooting. In this instance, they had some difficulty pulling it off. Throughout his testimony, the Witness stayed focused and didn't allow the prosecutors to misconstrue what he was saying. The Witness was also very clear about assumptions he was making. This passage will demonstrate:
Alizadeh: You didn't see the police officer shoot anybody?
Witness: No, I didn't see a police officer shoot anybody.
Alizadeh: Why is it that you would assume the police officer shot somebody?
Witness: Um, because I felt at this time I wasn't sure if Mike Brown had a weapon and anger at the police officer or threatened him, may have caused the police officer to shoot him. It is just me assuming that the police officer being that close [arriving on scene] to a shooting that fast, that it was conflict between them.
Alizadeh: I'm sorry. The fact that there were three police officers there very quickly, you drew that conclusion that it was a police officer involved shooting?
Witness: Yes.
Alizadeh: Or is it after when people were coming out and talking that you then learned that?
Witness: No, it was at that time. Like I said, I just assumed that it was a police shooting.
Alizadeh: Why wouldn't you think it was this guy because you said you saw him run after the shooting, right?
Witness: Uh huh.
Alizadeh: In your mind you don't think man, that guy just shot somebody and run in the field?
Witness: At the time of his running through here, I didn't see any officers in pursuit, so that's why I figure he was just running away from the scene and the officers were on the scene of what happened.
Vol. 11, p. 28-29.
After asking a number of questions about what the Girlfriend knew or might have known, Alizadeh brings up a potential discrepancy. Alizadeh asks if the Witness remembers telling FBI agents that he "watched Michael Brown take a few steps and then he was in the middle of the street".
Witness: I don't recall ever saying he took two or three steps.
Alizadeh: Your memory today he never moved from the time you saw him to when he went down to the ground. His body obviously moved, but he didn't walk in the street or anything?
Witness: Yes.
[snip]
Alizadeh: Do you recall they [FBI agents] talked to you on a August 16th?
Witness: Yes.
Alizadeh: Is that the first time that you talked to any officers or police?
Witness: Yes, those were the first and only time that I talked to them.
Alizadeh: You don't recall telling those two agents that, um, you observed Michael Brown take a few steps and then he was in the middle of the street, and then Brown dropped to one knee and collapsed face down and he stopped advancing. When he stopped advancing, the shooting stop?
Witness: I don't recall ever telling them that he took a few steps.
Alizadeh: Okay.
Vol. 11, p. 35-36. And that was the end of Alizadeh's effort to bring out a discrepancy. She didn't bring to the grand jurors' attention any exchange they might have heard in a recorded interview about Brown taking a few steps forward. She didn't refer to or read from a transcript of the Witness's interview. Alizadeh did both of these things when other witnesses were on the stand, but here she just said "Okay" and handed the questions over to Ms. Whirley.
Whirley repeated many of the same questions Alizadeh asked, all having to do with what the Witness was doing at the time of the shooting, what he saw, etc. His answers remained consistent throughout. Whirley didn't ask anything about the Witness's interview with the FBI at all. Vol. 11, p. 36-42.
Let me note here that I've been unable to locate the transcript of the Witness's interview with the FBI. There are four transcripts of interviews that took place on August 16, but none of these seem to be this Witness.
The Girlfriend
As noted above, after the Witness saw Michael Brown's body fall to the ground, he called out to his girlfriend that someone had just gotten killed.
We know all of the Girlfriend's story because she owned up to it, under oath, before the grand jury. See Vol. 11, p. 59-79. In sum, the police came to the couple's apartment at around 5:00 that day as part of a canvas. At the time, the Witness wasn't home. Instead of simply relaying that fact, the Girlfriend relayed his story to the police as if it were her own. She later gave a statement to the FBI, again repeating what the Witness had told her.
This is the part McCulloch seized upon as part of his sweeping condemnation of the eyewitnesses.
Analysis
The question you should all be asking here is this: How did the Girlfriend's actions in any way diminish the credibility of the Witness's account?
The answer is that it doesn't. She repeated what he saw and what he saw stood up to the prosecutors' questions. If we had a prosecutor who actually wanted an indictment against Wilson, the Girlfriend's name would have been stricken from the list of potential witnesses with no harm to the case whatsoever.
More important, though, is the fact that the discovery of the Girlfriend's lack of candor makes the Witness's testimony even stronger for the prosecution.
There is precisely zero evidence that the Witness encouraged or even covered for his Girlfriend. Indeed, he testified that he had some doubts that she had seen any part of the shooting.
Alizadeh: Now, did you hear [Girlfriend] told the FBI agents that she saw at least a part of this incident, correct?
Witness: Yeah.
Alizadeh: And is it your belief that she did not see part of the incident?
Witness: Yes.
[snip]
Alizadeh: So when she was giving he statement to the two female FBI agents and you were sitting there and listening to her say that, did you believe that she did see it at that time.
Witness: Like I said at the time I was still having my doubts because I wasn't really sure.
Vol. 11, p. 34, 55.
In this Witness, McCulloch has someone who does well on the stand and who will give honest testimony even when the truth is an uncomfortable one. But in his press conference, as his attorneys did before the grand jury, McCulloch chose to focus on a lie and pretend that her passing off the Witness's account as her own was more important than the veracity of the account itself.
Which brings me to the second point: the double-standard applied to testifying witnesses.
Yes, the Girlfriend was wrong to do what she did (and, given that Wilson walked, she's likely her own worst enemy, left to wonder if she bears responsibility for the result). But McCulloch and company are nothing short of hypocritical in pretending that what the Girlfriend did was that big of a deal.
The prosecutors repeatedly put state and federal officials on the stand to relay what someone else told them. They did so with the Witness and his Girlfriend, calling to the stand one of the FBI agents who interviewed him. His testimony consisted of what the Witness and the Girlfriend said to him. See Vol. 12, p. 51-63.
Far more damning, of course, is Darren Wilson Day. On the day Wilson took the stand, his testimony was preceded by three different witnesses, along with some recorded statements, whose primary purpose was to tell the grand jury what Wilson told them.
Of course, these witnesses never pretended that Wilson’s story was their own. But in the quest for the truth about Michael Brown’s death, that is a distinction without a difference. The testimony of these witnesses differed not one whit from the Girlfriend's statements. The witnesses weren’t relating anything they knew first hand about the shooting; they were merely telling a story someone else told them.
The one difference that does matter? The Girlfriend's account, as told by the man who actually saw it, held up under questioning, while the serially-told Wilson tale went unchallenged.
We all know what McCulloch was up to all along. My hope is that the foregoing stands as strong evidence that proves it.
Here's the video, if you can stand it.
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