Michael Brown’s reps say D.A. ‘went out of his way’ to discredit him

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the family of Michael Brown, cast doubt on the process behind the Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson as lawyers build the argument that the jury was pushed toward its decision by the prosecuting attorney on the case.

“We object to this process because all across America, whether it’s in New York, Los Angeles, California, Cleveland, young people of color are being killed by police officers and the local prosecutors [put] together this … unbiased grand jury and it continues to yield the same results,” Mr. Crump said.

St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch announced Monday that the grand jury did not find sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against Officer Wilson, who is white, for the shooting death in August of the unarmed Brown, an 18-year-old black man, setting off a wave of protests in Ferguson and across the country in the racially-charged case.

“We say to the prosecutor: we are not insane — we know that our children deserve equal justice, just as any American, and we want the prosecutors if they have a conflict of interest and for the sake of the public trust, which is so critical to Ferguson and many communities all over America, we pray that prosecutors will say ’we want people to believe in the system’ and if that means appointing a special prosecutor who has no relationship with the accused officers that you do so,” Mr. Crump said.

The Rev. Al Sharpton said Mr. McCulloch’s news conference “went out of his way” to discredit Brown, The Associated Press reported.

Questions had previously been raised about the neutrality of Mr. McCulloch, whose father, a policeman, was killed by a black man and who is someone deeply connected to law enforcement.

Mr. Crump had also said before the decision was announced that it’s a prosecutor’s job to recommend specific charges, rather than present all the evidence and leave the decision up to a grand jury.

“We don’t think it’s fair,” he said on ABC’s “This Week,” asking why the prosecutor couldn’t come in and recommend charges.

Anthony Gray, another lawyer for the Brown family, said Tuesday that he held out hope for other investigations.

“If they present evidence to indict, there would have been an indictment,” he said. “If they don’t present that evidence in a manner to secure an indictment, then there won’t be an indictment. So this grand jury decision, we fell, is a direct reflection of the sentiments of those that presented the evidence.”

He did say they appreciated the “data dump” and that they got the opportunity to read all of the testimony but hinted that it didn’t tell the whole story.

“We saw what was presented, but we didn’t hear how it was presented,” he said.