CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin ripped St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch for asking Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson "softball" questions during the cross examination of his testimony, which she called "fanciful and not credible."
On Monday, McCulloch had released all of the evidence provided to the grand jury that eventually decided not to indict Wilson for shooting unarmed teen Michael Brown. The evidence included Wilson's testimony to the grand jury that Brown looked "like a demon, that’s how angry he looked."
“When I grabbed him, the only way I can describe it is I felt like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan,” Wilson said. “That’s just how big he felt and how small I felt just from grasping his arm.”
But Hostin said the claim that Brown attacked Wilson inside of the police car, and tried to fire his service weapon did not make sense to her.
"It appeared to be... very fanciful," Hostin said. "When a prosecutor has a prospective target, a suspect, a defendant -- a prospective defendant -- inside of the grand jury, that's the prosecutor's chance to cross-examine that person. These prosecutors treated Darren Wilson with such kid gloves."
"Their questions were all softballs, he wasn't challenged, he wasn't pressed," she continued. "It was just unbelievable to me the way they treated him in front of that grand jury."
Hostin pointed out that Wilson was never required to provide a statement to the police, meaning he had a month to think about his testimony, and prosecutors had nothing to compare it to.
"He talks about Michael Brown reaching into his waistband," the CNN analyst noted. "Yet when one of the grand jurors asked him whether or not Michael Brown had a gun, he says, 'I didn't really think about that.'"
"He talks about this aggression from the very beginning, which seems odd," Hostin pointed out. "He talks about being hit so forcefully two time he thought the next hit would be fatal. Yet you look at his injuries, they don't seem to be consistent with someone 6-foot-6, 300 pounds punching you with full force."
"There are just so many discrepancies with his testimony."
CNN contributor Mark O'Mara, who represented George Zimmerman after he shot Trayvon Martin, argued that the forensic evidence was more important than discrepancies in Wilson's testimony.
"The most compelling evidence, that Mike Brown was running away, and at one point, turned around and came back 25 feet," O'Mara remarked. "Whether that was a charge, whether it was a maneuver, whether it was a walk, whether it was a run is open for conjecture... that's why Mike Brown is dead."
Hostin noted that none of the witnesses could corroborate Wilson's testimony that he warned Brown twice to lay down on the ground.
"The other witnesses that came forward said that they didn't hear him say that," she said. "So again, I found his testimony to have not been tested by the prosecutor, which is highly unusual. He wasn't cross-examined, he was treated with kid gloves in front of the grand jury. And I found his testimony to be fanciful and not credible."
