EXPERT: AUTOPSY DOESN'T SHOW IF BROWN WENT FOR GUN →hosted.ap.org
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Michael Brown’s official autopsy indicates he was shot in the hand at close range during a struggle, but a medical examiner not involved in the investigation says there’s no way to conclude whether the injury meant the unarmed 18-year-old was trying to grab the gun of the officer who killed him.
The St. Louis County medical examiner’s autopsy report, obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, doesn’t explain why Brown was killed after the apparent scuffle at Officer Darren Wilson’s police vehicle spilled onto a Ferguson street or confirm whether he was confronting Wilson or trying to surrender when he was fatally shot - both scenarios offered by various witnesses to the Aug. 9 shooting.
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St. Louis city medical examiner Michael Graham, who was not involved in the autopsy, said that and other evidence indicates the shot to the hand probably occurred inside Wilson’s SUV. Graham, in an interview with the AP, said it’s impossible to conclude whether the close-range injury meant Brown was trying to grab the officer’s gun, as Wilson has alleged.
Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist from San Francisco, said combined with other evidence, the autopsy indicates there was a struggle for Wilson’s gun inside the officer’s SUV.
"You don’t just look at one piece of evidence," Melinek told the AP. "You have a witness statement, the officer, saying that Michael Brown is reaching for the gun and it goes off and hits (Brown’s) hand. The physical findings (in the autopsy) are consistent with the officer’s statement."
Murder victims often have defensive gunshot wounds to their hands, either because they instinctively put their hand between themselves and the gun or because they try to push the gun away. Even if the original theory was true, there’s no reason to believe that trying to get the gun away from Wilson wasn’t a defensive act as well. Key questions remain unanswered.
"After there was no more threat, and (Brown) was running away, why did Officer Darren Wilson keep shooting?" Brown family attorney Benjamin Crump asked in an interview with the AP. "That’s what this is about. When Michael Brown put his hands up in the air, why does the officer keep shooting?"
And the story of Brown charging Wilson makes no sense at all. Brown’s body was some 25-30 feet away from Wilson’s vehicle. If we believe Wilson’s version of events, Brown attacked Wilson, then broke free, then ran 35-45 feet away, then turned around and ran back to attack Wilson again. The purpose of fleeing police is to escape, not to run around in a big, pointless circle — after you’ve been shot — in order to give the cop plenty of time to shoot you again. No one would behave this way.
The fact that an inconclusive autopsy is being spun into a conclusive one tells you all you need to know about what’s happening with the grand jury in Ferguson; the fix is in,
just as it was in the Trayvon Martin case.