breaking news from missouri tonight where the state s attorney general chris costar has responded to my questions about mistakes made by the assistant district attorney s who presented evidence to the grand jury investigating the killing of michael brown. the assistant attorney general satd the police use of deadly force law in missouri must be changed. in response to my question, to the attorney general, he said among the problems that ferguson has brought to light is the need to update missouri s use of deadly force statute. this statute is inconsistent with the united states supreme court s holding in tennessee versus garner. conseque consequently, it is important this statute is amended by the missouri legislature to incorporate the garner decision and to avoid confusion. within the criminal justice system. as i have reported on this program, there should be no
joining me norman siegel, director of the american civil liberties union, and from the council of civil rights. you ve been litigating with police for decades. how surprised were you by today s decision? as a lawyer, i was shocked, absolutely shocked that this happened. as a human being, i was saddened. as a black human being, i m angry about it. i wasn t shocked. if you know the history of this, the process is secret. it s not adversarial. we should abolish the grand juries when you have these kinds of cases. let s talk about this. how does this happen? we re not saying we re talking probable cause. we re talking can you charge a person. right. who we saw on tape do this. explain to me how this even came about? obviously, you weren t in the grand jury room but knowing what you know
well, certainly, i see what everyone else obviously saw and has reacted to. there s what the commissioner at the very outset characterized as a chokehold being applied during the course of this attempt to subdue mr. garner and bring him under arrest. the medical examiner said that s the cause of death. that is characterized as the cause of death. ultimately it s it is for the it would be for the grand jury to make a judgment about whether or not given the length of the hold and given the other circumstances that they would have an opportunity to consider including his cries for distress with respect to not being able to breathe. whether or not a person in the subject officer s position should have known that in continuing to apply that hold
they rely on the police to make their cases. they can t be objective. we ve seen that in other cases. it s playing itself out here. and that s why you need an independent review of it. is that right? it could be. listen, there s big problems here. generally when you have a police officer and a d.a. who feels they don t have the evidence, they p don t take it to the grand jury. they stand up and say, i don t have the evidence and they don t present the case. or, if they re too close, they excuse them, recuse themselves. something went wrong. even in the other cases, i looked at sean bell, a number of other cases, at least there was an indictment in the problem that we had was with the petty jury. here, amazingly, you don t have an indictment where the standard is so low to and complete
confusion in the criminal justice system because the united states supreme court clarified the proper and legal and constitutional use of deadly force by police in tennessee v garner 29 years ago. i reported last week the assistant district attorney provided the grand jury with the wrong law on police use of deadly force. the missouri law that was rendered unconstitutional by the supreme court decision in 1985. the grand jury transcript shows that she handed all of the grand jurors a copy of the old unconstitutional missouri law and said it is the law on what force is permissible and when in making an arrest by a police officer. but that wasn t true. that version of the law said it was legal for darren wilson to shoot and kill michael brown simply because michael brown at some point ran away from him. at the very end of the grand jury proceedings, she corrected the record by heading the grand jurors a current copy of the law