Some witnesses who appeared before the grand jury investigating the death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown were "clearly not telling the truth," according to the St. Louis county prosecutor, Robert McCulloch.
"Clearly some were not telling the truth,” he said during an interview on local radio station KTRS 550.
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He also said he's not planning to pursue charges against them.
In his first extensive interview since agrand jury decided not to indict white Ferguson, Missouri, Police Officer Darren Wilson in the high-profile case, McCulloch said he had no regrets about letting the grand jury members hear from non-credible witnesses.
"Early on I decided that anyone who claimed to have witnessed anything would be presented to the grand jury," McCulloch said, adding he would've been criticized no matter what.
During the interview, McCulloch referenced a woman who claimed to have seen the shooting, and backed up Wilson's account of the Aug. 9 fatal shooting,
the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
This "lady clearly wasn't present," McCulloch said. "She recounted a story right out of the newspaper."
The criticism of that witness fits the questions surrounding Sandra McElroy, also known as Witness 40, the Post-Dispatch notes.
McElroy, who's admitted to using racial slurs and trying to raise money for Wilson, testified she saw the entire shooting unfold, and that Brown charged the officer shortly before he was killed.
She also gave conflicting accounts of why she was at the scene of the shooting that day and admitted she has short-term memory problems from a head-on collision that left her with a traumatic brain injury, the newspaper reports.
McCulloch also insisted he had no regrets about announcing the grand jury decision after dark on the night of Nov. 24.
"There was no good time to make the announcement," he said. "Whatever was going to happen was going to happen."
"Those who were bent on destruction, they weren't demonstrators, they're common criminals."