FERGUSON, Missouri — A Missouri grand jury has made a decision on whether to indict a white police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson and will announce it at 9 p.m. (EST)
St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s office was due to make an announcement on the grand jury, the Washington Post and CNN reported, citing sources.
A spokesman for McCulloch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Activist groups have pledged fresh street protests if officer Darren Wilson is not indicted in the Aug. 9 shooting death of Michael Brown, 18, while the state has been planning a massive police presence to quell violence.
Ferguson has been on edge for weeks as residents await the grand jury’s decision. Shop owners in the city, which faced weeks of sometimes violent protests following Brown’s death, have boarded up their windows, and students in one area school district began an extended early Thanksgiving break on Monday.
Protesters have said they plan to demonstrate at the Ferguson Police Department and at the county courthouse in Clayton, about 8 miles to the south, following the grand jury’s decision.
Police in Clayton have placed large barricades around the courthouse and placed locks on mailboxes to prevent them being opened ahead of the announcement.
Lawyers for Brown’s family say the teen was trying to surrender when he was shot, while Wilson’s supporters say he feared for his life and opened fire in self-defense.
Brown is suspected of having stolen cigars from a nearby convenience store shortly before the incident. Brown and a friend had been walking down the middle of the street when Wilson approached them.
The grand jury could indict Wilson on charges of manslaughter or murder, or simply conclude that it did not have enough evidence to charge him, said Jens David Ohlin, a professor at Cornell Law School who specializes in criminal law.
Its decision will likely focus on what happened in the final seconds before the shooting, Ohlin said.
“They would have to say, look, there is no specific one piece of evidence that contradicts the police officer’s claim that he was acting in self defense,” to bring criminal charges, Ohlin said. “If there isn’t any one piece of evidence from those last few seconds that contradicts him, they may determine that they have no ‘true bill,’ that there are no charges.”
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon has declared a state of emergency in anticipation of the ruling and called in the National Guard, a move that some activists called unnecessarily heavy-handed. A spokesman confirmed that Gov. Nixon was en route to St. Louis but declined to confirm the details of or the reason for the trip.
Brown’s parents, ministers and community leaders have urged sympathizers to remain peaceful, whatever the outcome.
President Barack Obama has also urged that those who wish to protest do so peacefully, a White House spokesman said Monday.
National spotlight
The August shooting touched off a national debate about race relations and ignited nightly street demonstrations where police in riot gear, flanked by armored vehicles, fired rubber bullets and deployed tear gas to break up crowds.
President Obama dispatched Attorney General Eric Holder to Ferguson to investigate and try to restore calm in the community, where the population is mostly black and the police force is mostly white.
Local and state authorities scrambled to keep a lid on the protests in the face of criticism their heavy-handed tactics were only making the situation worse.
McCulloch declined to file charges directly and instead had a grand jury hear evidence over recent months, which kept tensions simmering. In a move aimed at transparency, the prosecutor’s office has pledged to release publicly evidence heard by the grand jury, where proceedings are usually kept secret.
Three autopsies were performed on Brown, who was shot at least six times. A private autopsy indicates Brown was trying to surrender, lawyers for Brown’s family said. The St. Louis County autopsy indicated a gunshot wound at close range to Brown’s hand.
The Justice Department has yet to release the findings of its autopsy.