I contend that it really is wrong to try the case of Darren Wilson in the public court of law based on mostly information that comes from the media even though some of that information does come from eye witnesses and credible experts and forensics evidence. However, at this point it looks like that is all we have got to go on since it appears that this case will never go to trial. Still despite what the Grand Jury has concluded there are many unanswered questions that should be answerable but they are mostly questions that it appears to me that nobody has thought to ask. I have not seen enough evidence or heard enough testimony to believe that some of these questions will be answered eventually but as of now, this is all I know.
Up until now there have been two areas that have been unclear to me that Grand Jury testimony has managed to clarify some but still some questions remain. Daily Kos has repeatedly published a news story that is in error but apparently the writers and readers of that story do not realize it. They stated that the measured distance from Michael Brown’s body where he lay dead in the street to the back of Officer Darren Wilson’s SUV is 148 ft. Since this is half of a football field distance away, they found it an incredible statement by Wilson that Brown would attempt to charge him. There are some distances that are not being taken into account here that I will attempt to clarify.
The shell casings where most of the shooting occurred was 35 feet from the back of Wilson’s vehicle. Because we know he gave chase that means the distance to where Brown’s body dropped was not 148 feet but rather only 113 feet (after you subtract the 35 ft distance) but that is still a sizable distance. What I found out additional to this is that Michael Brown’s blood was found about 20 feet beyond where he dropped. That meant he was a total of 133 feet from where Wilson was firing at him. We know Brown was already wounded in the hand while he stood next to Wilson’s police vehicle so if he had aims to stand his ground and duke it out you would think that running further away from Wilson would not have been an option in his mind. But instead he got a total distance away from the vehicle of 168 feet before he decided to take Wilson on (although at this time the distance between him and Wilson was only 143 feet since Wilson did give chase – still pretty much a half of a football field away).
This is an incredibly long distance to attempt to make a bum’s rush when you are already wounded and multiple shots have already been fired in your direction and according to testimony Brown appeared to be wounded once more and that occurred just as he turned around or was turning around. Forensic evidence states that discounting the first shot to Brown’s hand, none of the shots hit his body from the rear but from the forensic report I saw, there is every reason to believe that the forearm shot could have hit him from the rear. It all depends on the position of his arm because he was running. I can see an instance where he is raising his hands while still moving away from Wilson and just getting ready to turn toward Wilson. It would only take about a half of rotation of his body to make it appear that the bullet came from the rear even though by this time he was almost facing forward. That would be the one shot that witnesses say appeared to be the one that he reacted to just before he turned around.
It is astounding to me that no one on the Grand Jury has been able to put all this together already. We already know that the prosecutor was of no help. Although he made no effort to defend Wilson (because after all he is the prosecutor) he sure did spend a lot of time defending himself and the awful way that he purposely handled this case.
The other big question has to do with what specifically happened at the SUV itself. Wilson’s testimony made him sound like mister nice guy when he approached Brown and Johnson. He stated that he initially asked the pair what they were up to and then asked them to get out of the street and use the sidewalk. Dorian Johnson claims that he yelled at them and told them to get the f**k out of the street. Witnesses stated that he drove forward maybe a hundred feet and then stopped, put his vehicle in reverse and squealed his tires to back up to where the pair stood in the street. Statements from others indicated that had not the two men moved, Officer Wilson would in all likelihood have run them over.
From all this we start to get a feeling for the mood of Officer Wilson. Wilson claims he never attempted to pull Brown into his car window despite testimony of onlookers to the contrary. However, he did claim that he did reach out the window and attempted to push Brown back with his right arm. This action could have been construed by witnesses to have been an attempt by Wilson to pull Brown into the vehicle. On this statement I would have to say Wilson is being honest and the witnesses were mistaken in what they believed they saw.
Wilson claims that he attempted to get out of the vehicle but Brown shoved the door back on him. Dorian Johnson and other witnesses claim that Wilson pulled so close to the pair that the door deflected off Brown and hit Wilson as he attempted to exit the vehicle. This is most likely what happened in my estimation but I do not believe that Wilson realized what actually had happened and he may have thought Brown purposely shoved the door back at him thus fueling his anger even more.
Mostly everything from here is speculation but there were some things that did speak in Wilson’s favor. The redness on his face has been discussed but I have heard no one discuss the redness on the back of his neck. This would tend to indicate that during the tussle that ensued, Brown at some point grabbed the back of Wilson’s neck. The reason may have been that he was attempting to push Wilson’s head down in the process of wrestling for the gun. Brown obviously did strike Wilson at least two different times, once on each side of his face. Witnesses testified that both men were cursing and yelling. Given the demeanor of both men at this point, either one could have been the aggressor. Wilson would certainly be mad and even a little bit afraid if he thought Brown was actually going for his weapon as he claimed. Brown, however, might have reacted strictly out of fear when Wilson pulled a gun on him. The type of pistol he had will not fire if somebody physically blocks it with their hand. According to Wilson, Brown did just this as he struggled to take the gun away from Wilson. The fact he was cursing and challenging Wilson (if he actually was) may have been because after blocking Wilson from actually firing he may have thought he had gotten the upper hand on Wilson and was attempting to rub it in his face by making taunting statements. But if he ever did get the upper hand it did not last long and Wilson fired and hit him in the hand. There was soot in the hand wound of Brown so there is no doubt this was the first shot fired and it was at very close range (less than 3 inches according to forensics experts).
According to Wilson, he looked away from Brown who was still standing in front of his door and blindly fired yet another shot. That shot hit his door panel. I had heard earlier reports of broken glass in the vehicle but that must have been a false report. Brown must have reached into the police vehicle in spite of eye witness testimony because he did cause the red mark on the back of Wilson’s neck and on both sides of Wilson’s face. It, at first, made sense that Wilson was struck on the left side since we are talking about the driver side door but all reports have stated it was on the right side which made far less sense. As it turns out, it was actually on both sides so Wilson probably got the right side smack when he turned full face toward Brown while still sitting in his vehicle. In fact, testimony from Johnson who was standing right next to Brown indicated that this was the case.
Witnesses have stated that Brown never did double up his fist meaning these would have had to been open palm strikes. According to Johnson, however, his fist was clenched but he did not use the knuckles of his fist to strike Wilson. He instead hit him using the same angle you would if you were to slap someone; only closed your fist so that the front side of the fist that would show the fingernails is exposed and then that would be the point of contact. This type of a hit could also fool other eye witnesses who were not that close up.
It is my belief that once shot in the hand, Brown started running away. Another point of conflict with Wilson’s testimony is that Brown reached toward his waist band with his right hand giving an indication that he might be carrying a weapon and Wilson used this action by Brown for his reason for opening steady fire. If this were true, since it was Brown’s right hand that was wounded at the car door, you would think there would be a lot of blood near the waistband of Brown’s shorts. Despite this, I have not yet heard any testimony or evidence that would substantiate this claim. Even so, it is pretty preposterous to claim that Brown could actually hide a gun in his shorts and if he had such a gun and was intent on using it, why did he not draw it on Wilson while still back at his vehicle which would have made much more sense? Also, would you not think any weapon would fall out of his shorts as he was on a full run away from Wilson? His shorts only had an elastic waistband and he had no belt.
Besides these unanswered questions there is other testimony that has served to confuse the entire situation that appears to me like it could be easily debunked had the case gone to trial.
To start, there is a need to challenge the misinformation that is coming out mostly on Fox News because that is a large confusion factor for anyone attempting to understand the real facts behind this shooting. By challenge, I more or less mean dismiss altogether because although some of their information may be accurate and factual they seem to be making every attempt to spin it the wrong way. I normally do not watch Fox News anymore or pay any attention to reports that have come to me from others that do listen to them because I have found them to be unreliable. But because so many people I know insist on using them for their news despite my stated objections, I had no recourse but to watch them the day after the ruling on the indictment was handed down to find out what their spin is on this whole ordeal.
One of the first things they did was to trot out Allen West and some other black guy in a uniform to rant on about how the riots are being fueled by anarchist from out of state. Allen West is their "go to" guy anytime they want to present a dissenting opinion against anyone that is also black. I did not get the name of the other guy and although he is probably someone who is on the show as a regular contributor but since I have basically quit watching Fox News I would not have knowledge of that.
Granted it is obvious that there has been a lot of outside influences that may have driven these riots but the initial riot after Brown was killed left no time for anybody that lives too far away to plan a trip to Ferguson to egg on a riot that was already in full swing before they could have ever gotten there. As for the riot following the Grand Jury announcement, the St. Louis Police of Chief was answering a question for Bill O’Reilly of Fox News that asked if he thought the rioters that had already been locked up would just be released or would they be prosecuted. The Chief answered that he hoped they would be prosecuted because they were always locking up the same bunch of trouble makers every single time there was a riot. If it was consistently the same people then that kind of rules out anarchists coming in from out of state. I feel the people of Ferguson have enough to riot about without the need of prompting from outside sources.
Another falsity occurred when Fox was discussing witness testimony. Specifically there were only two they mentioned and they were witnesses 14 and 40. When discussing witness 40 they showed a series of hand-written statements from the witness that covered four pages. I originally thought that this was notes from testimony given to the police but I later found out that it came from a personal journal entry made by this person. Pages 2 through 4 were more than half covered up by the pages above them so only page 1 was available for viewing. But then they showed an excerpt from somewhere within the four pages that was in printed type (the actual pages were in cursive). The excerpt immediately covered up the original four pages. The testimony on the excerpt talked about how Brown challenged and charged Wilson from close range in a menacing fashion. Fox News has always been on the side of Darren Wilson throughout so it is no accident that they would hone in on this one testimony and ignore almost all the rest.
I rewound this testimony and froze my TV screen on the top page of the four before it was covered up by their excerpt. I had to walk up on the screen to even read it. Nothing on that page said a word about the excerpt so I am assuming it came from one of the later pages that were not visible. But what the first page did say started with an 8 a.m. entry and concluded with another 4 p.m. entry was that this person drove to Ferguson in the morning from someplace that was not identified. It may not have been that distant but the female making this testimony apparently had never been to Ferguson. She stated that she stopped at Q.T. to get directions so she could get a feel for where she was but then she got turned around and somehow in her lost stupor ended up on Canfield Drive precisely at the time the shooting of Michael Brown occurred. The shooting occurred at 12 PM. This witness was purported to be a female. She stated in her journal that she came to Ferguson with the sole intention of getting to understand black people better. She said her father had admonished her for vilifying a whole race of people and calling them n*ggers so she felt she needed to atone by going on this venture to gain a better understanding of black people. Of course Fox News mentioned not one word of this part of her testimony and would it not be just like them to focus in on the one witness who is an obvious racist?
I later found that someone got access to these journal entries and published all four pages. Here is a link to that journal entry. It also makes clear what the other three pages contain. In grandiose fashion this witness declares that there was an altercation between a cop and two kids she almost hit with her car. I suppose that was an indirect statement to indicate that had they not been in the middle of the street, none of this would have happened. In speaking of the altercation she states that the little one (Dorian Johnson) hits the mirror and then stated that she swears the little one had Darren Wilson’s leg. No one has ever stated this to be the case and it would be physically impossible for both men to have inserted their bodies through the vehicle window in that fashion but then she did not make clear if this happened inside or outside the vehicle. She did state that something gold fell on the ground when he hit the mirror and I had read another account where there was a gold bracelet on the ground that pictures proved belonged to Dorian Johnson. I think the impression at the time by the publisher of that article is that this was shell casings but I cannot be absolutely certain of that. I cannot even rightly remember if the bracelet was even near Wilson’s SUV.
Witness 14 made a statement nearly as incredible but what stood out about this man’s testimony is that he said he was threatened by residents in the area not to provide testimony of the incident as he believed he saw it. So the intent of Fox News here was to make it seem like residents of the apartment complex were in collusion to commit a uniform story that would indict Wilson while simultaneously providing a series of perjured testimonies.
I then turned to watch both CNN and MSNBC (switching between the two) to get a more informed and honest dialog. Rather than bring on their usual biased mouth pieces as did Fox, they mostly brought on lawyers and other experts to comment on the case that had no regular affiliation with their networks. They did use their regulars to provide commentary as did Fox but what was lacking with Fox were expert witnesses that could provide insights into the legal justice system and forensic evidence.
One other falsity that needs to be addressed is that protestors from other states were marching in solidarity in behalf of Mike Brown. As I started reading some of the signs from these protestors in other states I realized that although some were protesting in behalf of Brown, most were also protesting in behalf of others who were victims of police shootings in their respective cities.
Fri Nov 28, 2014 at 3:39 AM PT: I had to actually put my update as a comment because update will not allow the addition of links as will comments. To find my update, scroll down to the 21st comment.