Michael Brown Autopsy A Further Blow To “#Ferguson Racial Narrative

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has obtained and released the official autopsy report of Mike Brown, the black man shot and killed by Police Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO this past August. (The autopsy report is embedded below.)

The item in the report that perhaps sheds the greatest light on the circumstances of the shooting is the evidence that Mike Brown has a gunshot wound to the inside of his right hand near his thumb and palm that appears to be a contact gunshot wound. This would be consistent with the police narrative that Brown was fighting with Officer Wilson for possession of his service pistol when the shot was fired.

Gunpowder stippling is typically indicative of the distance between the muzzle of a fired gun and the gunshot wound caused by the projectile. If the shot is fired at close distance (inches to feet) there is typically unburned gunpowder that causes an observable stippling on the victim’s skin. When the shot is fired from a greater distance (several feet or further) the unburned gunpowder generally does not reach the victim’s skin, and thus there is no stippling.

Somewhat counterintuitively, however, there is another type of gunshot wound in which no stippling is found. In a contact gunshot wound, in which the muzzle is in contact with the victim’s skin, the unburned gunpowder simply enters the wound along with the projectile. Because the powder does not contact the skin, there is no skin stippling in a contact gunshot wound. A contact gunshot wound also typically causes a start-like burst or fragmentation of skin at the site of injury, as the hot gasses propelling the bullet enter and expand within the flesh. The projectile itself, of course, will itself often fragment skin and bone.

The microscopic examination of Mike Brown’s injured right hand in the autopsy report does, in fact, observe both skin and skeletal fragments consistent with a contact gunshot wound. Most telling however, is the report’s finding that “foreign particulate matter is present focally within the dermis of some of the skin tissue fragments and within the skeletal muscle tissue fragmentation. . . . The previously described particles of foreign matter are consistent with products that are discharged from the barrel of a firearm.” (Page 13 of the PDF embedded below.)

Brown’s numerous other gunshot wounds–three to his right arm (upper, middle, and forearm), two to his chest, and three to his head–are also described in a manner consistent with having been fired while Brown was facing Wilson, giving lie to the narrative that Brown was shot in the back as he fled.

Read more