"I didn't want to fire things up," St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch says of his silence since announcing the grand jury's decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown.; Credit: Pool/Getty Images
An unnamed member of the grand jury that declined to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown is suing St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch for the right to speak out about the controversial case.
Represented by the Missouri branch of the ACLU, the juror claims the 12-person jury was misrepresented in case files that were later made public by McCulloch. Washington University professor Peter Joy tells the LA Times that the fascinating part of the complaint was that “the prosecutor claimed to speak on behalf of the grand jury as a whole, and this particular grand juror is saying, ‘Wait a second, that’s not true, he mischaracterized the way I was thinking.’”
Representatives for McCulloch have declined to comment, but criminal defense specialist Steve Cron tells KPCC, “If this one juror whose suing is successful, other jurors will think ‘I want to talk, too’ and the whole thing will become a circus and be tried by the media.”
Do you think the Ferguson grand jury should be allowed to speak out? What difference would it make if they could?
Guests:
Tony Rothert, legal director ACLU Missouri
Steve Cron, Santa Monica criminal defense attorney, adjunct professor of law at Pepperdine University