By Scott Lauck
BridgeTower Media Newswires
ST. LOUIS, MO — The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently that a grand juror who participated in the decision not to indict former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson can’t talk about her experiences.
The appeals court upheld a federal judge’s earlier ruling that Missouri laws swearing grand jurors to secrecy pass constitutional muster.
“Because Missouri’s grand jury secrecy laws survive even the most exacting scrutiny, Doe failed to state a claim for which relief can be granted,” Judge Raymond W. Gruender wrote for the court. Judges Roger L. Wollman and Bobby E. Shepherd concurred.
The plaintiff, referred to as a woman but otherwise unidentified, sought to talk about her experiences in 2014 when the grand jury declined to indict Wilson for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.
In court documents, Doe claimed that then-St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch handled the case differently than other cases the grand jury heard.
In an unusual move, immediately after the grand jury chose not to indict Wilson, McCulloch released thousands of pages of transcripts from the proceedings. Evidence presented to the grand jurors appeared to support Wilson’s account that Brown attacked him and that the officer had shot the teen in self-defense.
The 8th Circuit, however, said McCulloch did not release any information about the jurors’ deliberations or identities. Gruender noted that grand jury secrecy dates back centuries in English common law.
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