A series of tweets from the account of a left-wing activist and Daily Kos writer prompted an investigation into possible leaks from a grand juror investigating the shooting death of Ferguson, Mo. teen Michael Brown at the hands of a local police officer.
If the leaks are true, it doesn’t look good to the prosecution.
A member of the St. Louis County grand jury allegedly told a friend that “there isn’t enough at this point to warrant an arrest” of officer Darren Wilson, the individual who shot and killed Brown, according to The Washington Post.
The tweet was picked up by California-based activist/writer Shaun King, who tweeted:
Early this morning, a longtime St. Louis resident posted that she had a friend on the Grand Jury for Darren Wilson…
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) October 1, 2014
She went on to post that her friend told her they doubted they’d charge Darren Wilson & hadn’t been given enough info to indict him yet.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) October 1, 2014
King was able to get a screetshot of the tweet before it was deleted by the user:
Within seconds of posting this, her friends told her to delete it and she did. It was screenshotted first. pic.twitter.com/b6kTf9p40h
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) October 1, 2014
He later noted that not only was the tweet deleted, the user’s entire Twitter account was closed.
She has since deleted her entire account. Before she deleted it, we saw that she is indeed a St. Louis resident w/ years of tweets there.
— Shaun King (@ShaunKing) October 1, 2014
The tweets were also picked up by the St. Louis County Prosecutor’s office, which is looking into the matter for possible jury misconduct. The Post reported:
Ed Magee, the spokesman for county prosecutor Robert McCulloch, said they received the information from a “Twitter user” Wednesday morning.
“We are looking into the matter,” he said.
An account of possible jury misconduct surfaced Wednesday morning on Twitter, when several users sent messages about one juror who may have discussed evidence in the case with a friend.
If the information was truly leaked to someone on the outside, it would be within the prosecutor’s discretion to start the proceedings all over again with a newly-empaneled jury.
“If this allegation is true and there is a member of the grand jury who is discussing the case with a Darren Wilson supporters the appropriate thing for the prosecutor to do is impanel a new grand jury,” Brown family attorney Ben Crump said in an interview with the Post. “If this person is discussing the case outside of the grand jury it is wholly inappropriate. It’s an issue of fairness for Michael Brown’s family.”
