JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — Despite calls for a special prosecutor to present Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson’s case to a new grand jury, Gov. Jay Nixon said he would not entertain the idea.
JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — Despite calls for a special prosecutor to present Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson’s case to a new grand jury, Gov. Jay Nixon said he would not entertain the idea.
On Monday night, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch announced Wilson would not face criminal charges for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager in August. The announcement set off unrest throughout the St. Louis area.
Mae Quinn, law professor and director of Washington University’s Juvenile Law and Justice Clinic, said in a statement Wednesday that a special prosecutor should be appointed. After reviewing the grand jury transcripts, Quinn said, she believes Wilson’s case “received preferential treatment as compared to others in the system.”
“It seems clear from the beginning of the proceedings that the prosecution quite unusually adopted a defense stance, injecting the idea of justified homicide into the process well before Wilson testified,” Quinn said. “Prosecutors also served as quasi-witnesses by essentially testifying about facts outside of the existing record and vouching for police processes.”
Quinn also felt jurors were presented “both inaccurate and confusing information about the law and how it was to be applied to the facts.”
But Scott Holste, the governor’s spokesman, said Nixon would not bring in a special prosecutor.
Quinn suggested in the statement the St. Louis County Circuit Court could appoint a special prosecutor for the case. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch attempted to reach court officials for comment, but the office is closed until Monday.