It was a month ago that unarmed teen Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson (who is still on paid administrative leave.) And it’s going to be even longer before the grand jury doesn’t have to return a verdict until January 2015. The extension was granted by Judge Carolyn Whittington and is said to be the longest allowed by Missouri law.
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This extension doesn’t mean that the grand jury won’t meet until January, but the investigation is expected to last into mid-October. St. Louis County Court Administrator Paul Fox says that this extension is only giving the jury a window to only focus on the Mike Brown case and nothing else. Edward Magee, a spokesman for the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney, said Tuesday that the grand jury was still hearing evidence, but “we don’t believe it’s going to take” until January for the jury to decide.
There are only nine votes are needed to indict. There’s only Black people in the jury. The grand jury includes six White men, three White women, two Black women and one Black man. Jurors are supposed to be non-biased, but if race has any weight in this case, Wilson could potentially get a not guilty verdict. Wilson will be given the opportunity to testify, but, as in a criminal trial, he is not required to do so.
Thankfully, Mike Brown supporters will not relent. At a St. Louis Council meeting earlier this week, they continued to ask for the removal of the county prosecutor investigating the case. Protestors want county prosecutor Bob McCulloch off the case and wants Governor Jay Nixon to appoint a special prosecutor. Honestly, who wouldn’t want that? McCulloch has been the county’s elected prosecutor for more than two decades and could have filed charges on Wilson himself. Instead he decided to take the case to a grand jury so it could determine whether the use of lethal force was justified. To me, that means he already feels there’s a possibility that Brown’s killing was justified. Also, McCulloch’s father was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty, so there’s certain emotional ties that could potentially factor in. Could he fairly oversee this case?
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