Key Interview Missing From Ferguson Documents

Dorian Johnson
In this Aug. 25, 2014, file photo, Dorian Johnson leaves Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church at the end of the funeral service for his friend, Michael Brown in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A law enforcement interview with a key witness doesn’t appear to be included with thousands of pages of documents released after a grand jury decided not to indict a Ferguson police officer in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.
The Associated Press reviewed more than 5,700 pages of documents released by St. Louis County prosecutors. It doesn’t appear that the documents include a transcript or a recording of a two-hour FBI and county police interview with Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown when he was shot. The discrepancy was first reported by KSDK-TV.
The documents include seven video clips of Johnson’s media interviews, as well as a transcript of his testimony to the grand jury that investigated the shooting. The transcript notes that jurors listened to a recording of an Aug. 13 interview of Johnson by the federal and county investigators, but documents released to the public don’t appear to include a separate transcript of that August interview.
“If it’s not there, it’s not there,” Ed Magee, a spokesman for St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch, said Monday. “I don’t know what was released.”
Magee acknowledged that his office didn’t publicly release copies of FBI interviews with some witnesses at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, which is conducting a separate civil rights investigation into Brown’s death. An FBI spokeswoman in St. Louis declined comment Monday.
“Those reports are not ours to release,” Magee said.
Grand jury investigations are closed to the public, but McCullough took the unusual step of releasing documents shown to the grand jury. At the time, he said he wanted transparency and believed “everyone will be able to examine that same evidence and come to their own conclusion.”
McCulloch released the documents Nov. 24, after the grand jury decided not to indict the officer, Darren Wilson. Johnson was walking with Brown when they encountered Wilson in a Ferguson street in August. Wilson fatally shot Brown, who was unarmed, after a struggle.
Wilson resigned from the Ferguson Police Department in late November.
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Associated Press reporter David A Lieb in Kansas City contributed to this report.
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Follow Alan Scher Zagier on Twitter at https://twitter.com/azagier

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