Michael Brown

Michael Brown, 18, was shot and killed by Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014, following a confrontation after Wilson stopped Brown and a friend for walking in the street. Brown's body remained in the street for roughly four hours afterward, which inflamed already-tense relations between the majority-Black city and its overwhelmingly white police force. A St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Wilson in November 2014. The Department of Justice separately cleared Wilson of civil rights violations in March 2015, while issuing a scathing report finding Ferguson's police and courts had systematically targeted Black residents for revenue rather than public safety. In 2020, the county's first Black prosecutor, Wesley Bell, reopened the case at the family's request and, after a five-month independent review, announced in 2020 that he too could not prove murder or manslaughter charges. Three separate reviewing authorities have now each declined to charge Wilson, who resigned days after the grand jury decision; no one has ever been charged in Brown's death.

Ferguson, MO · St. Louis County County

• 2014: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The August 9, 2014 shooting and the roughly four hours Brown's body remained on Canfield Drive afterward, per contemporaneous reporting and the DOJ's 2015 report.
• A St. Louis County grand jury of nine white and three Black jurors declined to indict Wilson on November 24, 2014; Wilson resigned from the Ferguson Police Department days later.
• The DOJ's March 2015 report cleared Wilson of federal civil rights violations, concluding prosecutors could not disprove his account that he feared for his life, while a companion DOJ report found a pattern of Ferguson police and courts systematically targeting Black residents for fines and fees.
• In 2020, St. Louis County's first Black prosecuting attorney, Wesley Bell, reopened the case at the family's request; after a five-month independent review, he announced he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Wilson committed murder or manslaughter under Missouri law.
• Autopsy results cited in the DOJ report found Brown was struck six to eight times.

• Whether Brown had his hands raised in surrender, as some witnesses said, or was moving toward Wilson, as Wilson testified and the DOJ report found more consistent with physical evidence, was never resolved in any court proceeding.
• The full physical struggle at Wilson's vehicle, including whether Brown reached inside it, was reconstructed from disputed witness accounts rather than settled by any trial.
• Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson and five other city officials resigned following the DOJ's report, but the individual scope of each resignation's connection to Brown's case specifically, versus the broader pattern-or-practice findings, was not always made explicit.

• PBS NewsHour — “Prosecutor says no charges for officer in Michael Brown's death” (2020)
• NBC News — “DOJ Says Officer Darren Wilson, Cop in Ferguson Case, Won't Be Charged” (2015)
• CBS News — “No charges against officer who fatally shot Michael Brown” (2020)
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs