Additional grand jury leaks reflect witness testimony in Wilson investigation

The leaks are trickling out. Just yesterday, I wrote about the two previous grand jury leaks during the last five days that corroborate original public accounts from the Ferguson Police Department, and the radio interview of one officer Darren Wilson’s supposed friends.

From a Washington Post article posted overnight, with my emphasis in bold.

Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown fought for control of the officer’s gun, and Wilson fatally shot the unarmed teenager after he moved toward the officer as they faced off in the street, according to interviews, news accounts and the full report of the St. Louis County autopsy of Brown’s body.

So, what about the witnesses who have testified about the shooting and who are they?

… more than a half-dozen unnamed black witnesses have provided testimony to a St. Louis County grand jury that largely supports Wilson’s account of events of Aug. 9, according to several people familiar with the investigation who spoke with The Washington Post.

These witnesses did not show up in the media – with lawyers by their side – telling us about what they saw. Of course the Brown family will claim these witnesses do not exist, and their own witnesses are being ignored. If you accept the premise Brown may have been the aggressor here – even if just a chance he was – you’d have to admit the first-hand witnesses to those events would want to remain anonymous after everything that has happened in Ferguson after the shooting.

Evidence?

Some of the physical evidence — including blood spatter analysis, shell casings and ballistics tests — also supports Wilson’s account of the shooting…

And the autopsy report? The St. Louis Post Dispatch brings us the full release, and I copied the scanned PDF and uploaded it here. (It’s a large, 14MB, 16-page JPG converted to PDF.)

The narrative includes what we have heard since the day after the shooting. This is from the preliminary investigative details provided by the Detective Hokamp to Wendell Payne, the medicolegal investigator. My emphasis, and I realize it seems a bit strange read “the deceased turned around”, but I guess that is how they write these reports.

The deceased then ran down the roadway. Officer WILSON then began to chase the deceased. As he was giving chase to the decease, the deceased turned around and ran towards Officer WILSON.

After reading through most of the report, it’s very factual in nature and offers no written corroboration to Wilson’s leaked sequence of events, the police chief’s or the witnesses. In-other-words, it does not say “Brown was running towards Wilson when he was shot.” On page 13 we read about the microscopic slide exam of Brown’s skin, that indicates there was “foreign particulate matter … consistent with products that are discharged from the barrel of a firearm.” From this…

Experts told the newspaper that Brown was first shot at close range and may have been reaching for Wilson’s weapon while the officer was still in his vehicle and Brown was standing at the driver’s side window.

More…

Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in San Francisco who reviewed the report for the Post-Dispatch­, said it “supports the fact that this guy is reaching for the gun, if he has gunpowder particulate material in the wound.”

Melinek, who is not involved in the investigation, said the autopsy did not support those who claim Brown was attempting to flee or surrender when Wilson shot him in the street.

I’m not familiar with autopsies at all, but I’d say the autopsy does support the leaked information about what more than a half-dozen witnesses told the grand jury.

Victor W. Weedn, chairman of the George Washington University Department of Forensic Sciences, said the autopsy report raises doubts about whether Brown’s hands were raised at the time of the shooting but is not conclusive.

“Somebody could have raised their hands way above their head and lowered their hands and then be shot,” Weedn said. “So an autopsy will never rule out that the hands were above the head. It can only say what happened at the time of the shooting. . . . With the graze to the right arm, it appears the arm was in a vertical position, suggesting that it was closer to down by his side, but it could have been higher.”

We should not ignore the the information about marijuana in Brown’s system. I’m no chemist and confused by the autopsy. There is no DELTA-9-THC in Brown’s urine sample, but there is 11-HYDROXY-THC and 11-NOR-DELTA-9-THC-COOH in his system. The report states “Delta-9-THC detection in the blood defines impairment.” But since the urine was negative for that substance, I think it means Brown had smoked recently but was not legally impaired at the time. The chemical compound changes as it is stored in the body. At least that’s how I read it with information I can find online.

The Wilson family, their lawyers and the protestors don’t care about any of this. In their minds, it’s all a fabrication and grand conspiracy.

Benjamin L. Crump, an attorney for the Brown family, said Brown’s family and supporters will not be convinced by the autopsy report or eyewitness statements that back Wilson’s account of the incident.

“The family has not believed anything the police or this medical examiner has said,” Crump said. “They have their witnesses. We have seven witnesses that we know about that say the opposite.”