Darren Wilson’s Civil Suit Testimony Sheds New Light on Michael Brown Shooting
Some surprising new information has come out about the shooting of unarmed Ferguson 18-year old Michael Brown, in a civil suit against police officer Darren Wilson. First, as Wesley Lowery describes in his Washington Post article, Wilson admitted he and other officers used racial slurs to refer to African Americans.
But more importantly, one of the claims Wilson made in order to justify shooting Brown 10 times was that Brown had reached into Wilson’s police car and tried to grab his gun.
Ashley Yates posted a comparison of Wilson’s claim at the time, and the admission contained in the new testimony.
left: Darren Wilson testimony circulated in 2014right: Darren Wilson’s 2016 responses to civil suit case questions pic.twitter.com/1cPIYFrYin
— ashley yates (@brownblaze) March 15, 2017
Here’s the full PDF document of Wilson’s testimony. It’s difficult not to conclude that a serious miscarriage of justice took place when he was not charged with any crimes in the shooting, when his main excuse for using deadly force is now admitted to be false.
Clarification: The new testimony doesn’t make this clear, but Wilson’s original testimony was that he drew his gun and then Brown tried to grab it from him. So while Wilson does admit Brown didn’t try to grab the gun while it was in his holster, it doesn’t contradict his original testimony.
When writing the post we originally referred back to the New York Times article that summarized Wilson’s original testimony, and this distinction wasn’t clear in that summary either. We apologize for getting this one wrong at first. Thanks to David Wong for pointing it out.