Brown family lawyer slams 'unfair and broken' grand jury system

Lawyers for Michael Brown's family say the process that led to a white officer not being indicted in the fatal shooting of the unarmed, black 18-year-old is "unfair and broken.”

Benjamin Crump said on Tuesday that the family's legal team objected to St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCullough's decision to call a grand jury in the case and not appoint a special prosecutor.

Speaking at a news conference in Ferguson, where Brown was shot on Aug. 9, Crump also called for protests to remain peaceful.

"No-one is going to condone violence," he said. "Michael Brown Sr. has eloquently called for peace and calm. We all have a responsibility to protect the community."

Crump called for the introduction of a “Michael Brown's law,” which would mean all police within the U.S. would be required to wear a personal video camera so their actions were "transparent.”

"We could see what the outcome was going to be, and that is what occurred last night," he said. "We object to this process because, all across America, young people of color are being killed by police officers and local prosecutors put together these unbiased grand juries and it continues to yield the same result."

Civil rights activist Al Sharpton, who also spoke at the news conference, said McCullough had gone out of his way to discredit Michael Brown.

"I have never seen a prosecutor hold a press conference where he went out of his way to discredit the witness," Sharpton said. "Have you ever heard a prosecutor explain to the press why the one who did the killing is not going to trial, but the victim is guilty of several things that no-one has established?"

Sharpton said the prosecutor had "methodically tried to discredit witnesses still needed in the ongoing Federal investigation.” A federal Justice Department investigation into the shooting is still active. 

Lawyer Anthony Gray said the decision was a "direct reflection of the presentation of the evidence," and criticized what he called "cynicism" in the questions found in the grand jury documents, which were released Monday night.

Brown's lawyers and Sharpton all said they were not surprised by the decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson, who shot the teenager 12 times.

Sharpton made repeated calls for calm during the news conference, saying that a planned summit of civil rights groups would yield a plan for "mass and regular marches, legislation, and economic boycotts.”

Shortly after the decision, the hashtag #HandsupDontSpend started trending on Twitter, encouraging people not to take part in America's "Black Friday" sales in protest against the lack of indictment.

Al Jazeera and wire services