海角大神

It鈥檚 been nearly three months now since Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson, Mo., Police Office Darren Wilson in an incident the facts of which remain largely shrouded in mystery, rumor, and sometimes conflicting eyewitness statements to the media. The shooting itself, of course, set off more than two weeks of protests and confrontations between the police and citizens in the streets of the St. Louis suburb, with protesters demanding that Wilson be arrested and the police responding, at least initially, with聽an overly excessive militarized response聽that only seemed to inflame the crowds and, in many cases, shock the nation. Since then, the Ferguson story has largely disappeared from the headlines, but that doesn鈥檛 mean that the story is over. Protests have continued in the town on a regular basis, and there have been incidents, such as confrontations between protesters and football fans outside St. Louis Rams games, and, of course, continued calls for Officer Wilson to be charged and arrested, with聽some implication that things will become violent if the grand jury fails to return an indictment.聽In the past week or so, though, there have been reports leaking out of the investigation that seem to support the officer鈥檚 version of events as we know them, and to suggest that we may not see a grand jury indictment at all.

The first leaks appeared聽last week in The New York Times,聽which passes along information from unnamed federal officials involved in the federal civil rights investigation into the shooting that is running parallel to the grand jury proceedings:

Yesterday,聽The Washington Post聽laid out additional reports that have been leaked from the investigation聽that seem to further corroborate the version of events that Officer Wilson has apparently communicated, and again calls into question whether there would be a sufficient legal basis to proceed with criminal charges:

As a preliminary matter, it鈥檚 worth noting that we should be as cautious about judging this case based on leaked evidence before the grand jury has spoken as we should have been in the days immediately after Brown鈥檚 shooting when the evidence that was coming to the public consisted mostly of speculation and statements from only those witnesses that chose to go public. Most importantly, we don鈥檛 have in front of us all the evidence that the grand jury does, we haven鈥檛 actually seen the witnesses testify in person, meaning we have no basis on which to judge their credibility, and we aren鈥檛 getting the same complete picture that they are. For example, just looking at the autopsy results or reading what some eyewitnesses to the incident may have said is basically viewing things in isolation in a way that the grand jurors aren鈥檛 supposed to be doing. Instead, they are supposed to be looking at all the facts, taken together, in order to determine if sufficient evidence exists to bring some kind of charge against Officer Wilson. That charge could range from murder all the way down to criminally negligent homicide, but it鈥檚 not easy to make that judgment when you鈥檙e just viewing snippets of information here and there, and you鈥檙e doing it through the lens of the media and 鈥渆xperts鈥� who themselves don鈥檛 have anymore access to the entire package of evidence that is being presented to the grand jury. The final thing to keep in mind, of course, is that the leaks that are coming out are selective leaks coming from sources that are trying to push public opinion on the case in one direction or the other.

All of that being said, though, it鈥檚 impossible not to look at this evidence, such as it is, and conclude that the story that became popularized about the confrontation between Brown and Wilson that was popularized in the days immediately after it occurred and the protests began didn鈥檛 play out.聽Assuming the autopsy and forensic reports are correct, then it does indeed appear that there was a struggle for Wilson鈥檚 gun inside his vehicle, and that at least one of the shots that hit Brown, although not fatally, occurred while that happened. There doesn鈥檛 seem to be any other reasonable way to interpret the presence of his blood inside the car and on its exterior or the presence of close-range gunshot wounds and apparent gunpowder residue on Brown鈥檚 body. The autopsy report also seems to conflict with the claims that Brown was in the process of running away or surrendering, depending on who you listen to, when the fatal shots were fired and may be consistent with Wilson鈥檚 contention that Brown was moving toward him. Taken together, all of these tend to paint a far more complicated picture of what happened that afternoon than was being circulated by the media and protesters in the days immediately after the incident, and it places the entire incident in a new light. To be sure, even if it is true that Brown had tried to reach for Wilson鈥檚 gun at some point, it could still be possible that Wilson鈥檚 final use of force was unjustified, but that鈥檚 something that will have to be judged by the grand jury in the totality of the circumstances, including the fact that this entire incident unfolded over the course of less than 90 seconds, and perhaps less than a minute, according to several of the eyewitness reports that have been made to the media since August.

In addition to these factual issues, there may also be legal barriers to proceeding against Wilson. Specifically, one provision of the Missouri Code聽appears to give police near unlimited discretion in using deadly force in situations similar to the Brown case:

The possibility that all of this leads to, of course, is that the grand jury will return without indicting Wilson at all, or that it will indict him on some lesser charge that will do little to quell the anger of the people who continue to protest in Ferguson and elsewhere regarding this case. While it鈥檚 still a stretch to fear that this result would automatically lead to violence akin to some of the looting and property damage that we saw in August, it鈥檚 logical to assume that such a result would lead to some kind of unrest even, it if were somewhat quelled by factors such as the weather. Additionally, the report in the聽Times, which appears to come from federal investigators, seems to be laying the groundwork for the possibility that the Justice Department may not, in the end, bring civil rights charges due to lack of evidence that Wilson was acting with the intent of violating Brown鈥檚 civil rights when this all happened. Perhaps that鈥檚 what all of this leaking is all about, to try to lay the groundwork for results out of the grand jury that people in Ferguson are likely to find disappointing, to say the least. Whether that stops the protests from reigniting in a few weeks if the grand jury does indeed fail to indict remains to be seen.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.