ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis County grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson illustrates the difficulty of bringing charges against police officers, particularly when there are such widely divergent eyewitness accounts and because officers tend to be given the benefit of the doubt by jurors, legal analysts said.
The decision against bringing charges against Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown is notable because the legal threshold for a grand jury is lower than at a trial. The grand jurors had to determine only that there was probable cause to believe Wilson committed a crime — not that there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Typically, grand juries hear a condensed version of the evidence that might be presented at a trial. In the Ferguson case, the jurors spent months hearing more extensive evidence and testimony about the complex case.
With no indictment brought, prosecutor Bob McCulloch said Monday that he will take the unusual step of releasing transcripts and audio recordings of the grand jury investigation.
The civil rights division of the Department of Justice is conducting its own investigation into the shooting. Federal law enforcement officials have said that inquiry is continuing, but that so far there is little evidence to suggest they will prosecute Wilson.
The only witnesses known for certain to have testified before the Missouri grand jury were Wilson and Dr. Michael Baden, who performed a private autopsy on Brown on behalf of his family, but others also appeared.
Legal analysts said the decision shows that enough jurors believed that Wilson probably acted in self-defense as he faced off with Brown or that Wilson was within his rights as a police officer to use deadly force.
‘‘If an officer thinks someone is a deadly threat, they are not allowed to fire warning shots or shoot people in the leg,’’ said Mark Schamel, a criminal defense lawyer who specializes in representing law enforcement officers in use-of-force cases. ‘‘If they have a basis to use deadly force, they are trained to shoot center mass until there is no longer a threat.’’
Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of California at Irvine law professor, said it is also the job of a grand jury to keep cases from proceeding to trial in criminal courts if they believe there is no chance for a conviction.
The US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled in favor of police officers, which could have made it difficult to successfully prosecute Wilson. The court has said that use of deadly force is justified if officers think they must act to protect the lives of themselves or others or if they believe it is necessary to stop a crime in progress.
Civil rights lawyers who specialize in police misconduct cases said the personal biases of jurors also probably played a role.
The county has not released jurors’ names — it is prevented from doing so by state law — but it has disclosed the gender and racial makeup. The panelists were a black man, two black women, six white men and three white women, court officials said.
Cynthia Heenan, a lawyer with Detroit-based Constitutional Litigation Associates, said citizens, particularly white citizens, want to believe officers. ‘‘Police in America enjoy a special status right now — particularly since 9/11,’’ she said.
Complicating the case for jurors was that there were dozens of eyewitness accounts — and many of them were conflicting.
People familiar with evidence presented to the grand jury have said that some eyewitnesses, describing the initial struggle at the police sport utility vehicle where the first two shots were fired, thought Wilson was the aggressor, while others thought Brown was.
These people said that some eyewitnesses also believed Brown was surrendering at the time Wilson fired, while others said he was not.
The conflicting accounts probably confused grand jury members, creating doubt — which would work in favor of Wilson, specialists said. In the grand jury process, the benefit of the doubt is supposed to given to the defendant, whether the person is a police officer or not, according to Chemerinsky.