Johnathon Burns from the Burns Law Firm in St. Louis is the attorney handling the case:
“What we’re arguing is that since he is deceased, those documents revert from being confidential, they revert back into the public sphere,” Burns said. “Missouri common law applies, and under Missouri common law, court records and virtually all other documents are open to the public.”
The teen who was fatally shot earlier this month had no criminal record as an adult, but Johnson claims it was due to the fact that Brown had only recently turned 18. He insists it is important to know the truth about Brown’s past in order to help confirm whether the parent’s statements of him being a “gentle giant” are really true.
“To find out if those police officers are correct requires seeing Brown’s juvenile arrest record, which ought to be freely available given that he is dead and therefore has no right to privacy remaining. Knowing the truth about Brown’s past will help us gauge the credibility of his parents and family who have called him a ‘gentle giant.’”
Johnson claims that the information he is about to obtain from the lawsuit will change everyone’s view of the Michael Brown shooting and reveal how the media “got played” with their coverage of the teen’s death.
It will be interesting to see what comes of all of this. The media from the beginning has attempted to spin the story in order to fit a certain agenda. But if it really comes to light that Brown was a murder suspect, that will be a really inconvenient fact to get past
