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janklow;7572476 said:continued:
Michael Brown spent his last day with his friend Dorian Johnson. Here's what Johnson saw.
bolded seems, well, pretty reasonable.Michael Brown did pass off his cigarillos
But Johnson does semi-corroborate a key moment in Wilson's account. I noted this incredible passage in Wilson's telling earlier:
I was doing the, just scrambling, trying to get his arms out of my face and him from grabbing me and everything else. He turned to his...if he's at my vehicle, he turned to his left and handed the first subject. He said, "here, take these." He was holding a pack of — several packs of cigarillos which was just, what was stolen from the Market Store was several packs of cigarillos. He said, "here, hold these" and when he did that I grabbed his right arm trying just to control something at that point. Um, as I was holding it, and he came around, he came around with his arm extended, fist made, and went like that straight at my face with his...a full swing from his left hand.
The idea that Brown stopped punching Wilson just long enough to hand his contraband to his friend struck me, on first read, as beyond belief. But Johnson backs at least part of that account:
While the officer is grabbing ahold of Big Mike, he kind loses grip around his neck, that's how I knew he had a good grip. He never fully let Big Mike go, now he has a good grasp on his shirt. So now Big Mike's able to turn different angles while he is trying to pull away. And at a point he turned, now we are face-to-face, and he put his hands like, grab these, Bro. And in shock, I'm so not unconsciously, my hands open to where he could put the rillos in my hand.
So Johnson and Wilson agree: there is a moment when Brown turns to Johnson and hands over the stolen cigarillos. But Wilson tells it as Brown freeing his hands to more effectively pummel Wilson, and Johnson tells it as Brown freeing his hands to better escape Wilson.
It goes on like this. Johnson, Wilson, and the ballistics report all agree that the first shot was fired from inside the car. But where Wilson says this shot came after Brown tells him, "You're too much of a fucking pussy to shoot me," and then lunged for the weapon, Johnson reacts with total confusion when the grand jury suggests Brown was trying to get at Wilson's gun inside the car.
"In order for Big Mike to have touched the gun, it is almost like his whole top half of his body had to be inside the vehicle and that never happened," Johnson says. It's a pretty specific objection: he doesn't just say Brown never went for the gun, but that he was never so deeply embedded in the car that he could have gone for the gun. Johnson's whole memory of the fight is Wilson trying to pull Brown towards the vehicle and Brown trying to get away.
The shooting
The testimony where Johnson recounts Brown being shot dead is devastating. He says Brown had already been shot and was running away. He says Brown stopped running after the second shot. He says Brown turned and yelled, "I don't have a gun," and took a kind of half step towards Wilson. And then he began to say something else, and since this is the crucial, terrible moment in the testimony, I'll let him tell it:
The second statement he was starting to say I, you know, he couldn't get the full sentence out before the rest of the shots hit his body. And I stood and watched face-to-face as every shot was fired and as his body went down and his body never — his body kind of just went down and fell, you know, like a step, you know what I'm saying? Like a step, his body just kind of collapsed down and he just fell.
This is a sharp contrast to what Wilson says:
When [Brown] stopped, he turned, looked at me, made like a grunting noise and had the most intense, aggressive face I've ever seen on a person. When he looked at me, he then did like the hop...you know, like people do to start running. And, he started running at me. During his first stride, he took his right hand put it under his shirt into his waistband. And I ordered him to stop and get on the ground again. He didn't. I fired multiple shots. After I fired the multiple shots, I paused a second, yelled at him to get on the ground again, he was still in the same state. Still charging, hand still in his waistband, hadn't slowed down.
And then Johnson runs. He is hyperventilating, and vomiting, and running. It takes him only a minute or two to get to his apartment, he says, but "I'm still throwing up, I have been throwing up since I started running. I've been throwing up all the way along the run."
A more recognizable story
As with Wilson, it's impossible to know where Johnson is telling the truth, where he's lying, and where his memory is simply faulty — eyewitness accounts are completely unreliable even under the best of circumstances, and these were not the best of circumstances.
And my hunch is Johnson is shading the truth in at least a few places — starting with the robbery, but potentially continuing up through the tussle. Johnson says he never saw Brown throw a punch but he's not totally convincing on it, and Wilson did suffer some contusions on his face (though it's not clear those injuries back Wilson's testimony, either).
But where Wilson's account presents Brown as completely irrational and borderline suicidal, Johnson's account is more recognizable. It isn't a blameless, kindly beat cop who gets set upon by a rampaging Michael Brown. And nor is it a blameless, kindly Michael Brown who gets set upon by a cold-blooded murderer with a badge.
It's a cop who feels provoked by these two young black men who won't get out of the street, and who tries to teach them a lesson, to put them in their place. His actions escalate the situation, and then the adrenaline floods, and then there's a struggle, and the situation escalates, and escalates, and escalates, and then Darren Wilson shoots Michael Brown and Michael Brown dies.
All this happened in less than two minutes. The fight happened in even less than that. And so there's also room for both accounts to be subjectively right. With the adrenaline pumping Wilson might really have grabbed Brown first, but then thought Brown was trying to grab his gun, or beat him to a pulp, even as he was really trying to get away. Brown might have sworn at the cop who almost clipped him with a truck, but after that, he might have really been trying to simply survive the altercation.
Indeed, we might never get to the truth of what happened in those two minutes on August. But the point of a trial would have been to get us closer. We would have found out if everything we thought we knew about Brown was wrong, or if Wilson's story was flawed in important ways, or if key witnesses completely broke under pressure. We would have heard real cross-examination. We would have seen the strongest case that could be mounted by both the prosecution and the defense. But now we're not going to get that chance. We're just left with these Rashomon-like testimonies, a dead 18-year-old, and a shattered family.
"Teach them a lesson" "Put them in their place"
Particularly, since by both Johnson & Wilson's accounts, neither Brown nor Johnson immediately complied with Wilson's command to get on the sidewalk. Wilson
