Last week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch announced that they were filing a request for the court to unseal any and all juvenile records for Michael Brown. They decided to file the request after lying liar and former Daily Caller writer Charles C. Johnson (who is NOT Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs) claimed Brown was facing felony murder charges.
This was a classic effort to slime the victim because, well, Black Guy. It just escapes conservatives that it's entirely possible that a white cop pulled his weapon and unloaded it into a black kid without probable cause. Surely he was a murder suspect, or robbed a store, or smoked weed, or something.
Except he didn't do any of those things, as they discovered today.
As a child, Michael Brown was never found delinquent of the juvenile equivalents of Missouri’s most serious felony charges, and was not facing any at the time he died, a court official said Wednesday.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch filed a petition Aug. 22 asking a judge in the St. Louis County Family Court to open any juvenile records on Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old shot to death last month by a Ferguson police officer. A conservative blogger from California had separately requested the records be opened.
Police had said earlier that the 18-year-old Brown had no adult criminal record.
The petitions went to a hearing Tuesday with St. Louis County Family Court Ellen Levy Siwak, who took the case under advisement.
But disclosures during and after the hearing on Tuesday put to rest claims by blogger Charles C. Johnson and others that Brown was facing a murder charge at the time he was shot to death.
Cynthia Harcourt, a lawyer for St. Louis County Juvenile Officer Kip Seely noted that some juvenile records and proceedings are open to the public: those that concern crimes that would be Class A or B felonies if a juvenile had been charged as an adult. But there were none for Brown.
Even if he had been, it wouldn't matter. All that matters is that moment in time when Darren Wilson drew his gun and shot Mike Brown dead. Not what went before.
But, if we're going to wonder aloud about external factors, let's go investigate Darren Wilson. Get his records opened up from Jennings. Find out if he faced disciplinary action. Reach back into his younger days and see if he was a juvenile delinquent.
If they're not going to do that, they should have done nothing. I hope they're proud of themselves. Stay tuned, because I'm sure there will be other attempts to paint Brown as a "thug."
Just because.
