Dr. Michael Baden
The grand jury set to make a decision on whether or not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson is scheduled today to hear testimony from a private pathologist—the noted Michael Baden—hired by Michael Brown’s family, according to a representative from the family.
Baden, a forensic pathologist from New York who has worked on numerous famous cases, will testify on Thursday, according to Adner Marcelin, spokesman for Benjamin Crump, one of the lawyers representing Brown’s family.
Baden, who has testified in the murder trials of O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector and Drew Peterson, among others, was the chairman of the committee of pathologists that investigated the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Baden was hired by the family to perform a separate autopsy from the one completed by the local medical examiner’s office, which apparently leaked information that appeared to support Wilson’s version of events.
Witness accounts of shooting have varied. Some say Brown surrendered and was shot with his hands raised; others say there was a struggle in the car before the shooting.
CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin says the move to bring Baden before the grand jury isn’t unusual. New York attorney Paul Callan disagrees.
“When a prosecutor says he’s going to present all evidence available, the implication is that he or she is presenting all sorts of objective evidence of non-interested bystanders,” Callan said on CNN, implying that Baden might not be objective.
Protestors in Ferguson are anxiously awaiting the jury’s decision, which could be announced as early as this week. They have requested a 48-hour notice before decision, hoping to use that time to to diffuse a potential violent response.
Some local businesses on West Florissant Avenue, where a lot of damage was done during the August protests, have boarded up windows in preparation for the jury decision, according to CNN.
Meanwhile, Brown’s parents spoke to the U.N.Committee Against Torture in Geneva on Tuesday “to get justice for [their] son.”
