On July 10, 2024, attorneys and activists from Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard University appeared alongside members of Mike’s family before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) for a public hearing seeking accountability for Mike’s murder by a St. Louis police officer. This case marks the first time the Commission has held a public hearing about an individual case of U.S. police violence. 

Mike’s mother Lezley McSpadden testified, appearing by video with his picture on the wall behind her. She described the protests following her son’s death at the hands of police and the crushing disappointment and frustration at the failure of the St. Louis prosecuting attorney’s office to hold accountable the officer who killed her son. When the Department of Justice (DOJ) later issued a report accompanying its decision to decline to pursue civil rights criminal charges against the officer who killed her son, Ms. McSpadden lost hope in the justice system. “They used that DOJ report like a Bible. And it has a lot of holes in it, just as Mike’s body did.”

IACHR Commissioner and Rapporteur on the Rights of Afro-Descendants and against Racial Discrimination, Gloria De Mees, emphasized the Commission’s commitment to addressing the human rights concern of systemic racism. The Commission then heard testimony from Ms. McSpadden. She described how former St. Louis prosecutor Bob McCulloch, responsible for the failed grand jury proceeding against the officer who killed Mike Brown, demonstrated a pattern of bias against the Black community and an indifference to prosecuting police violence. She emphasized her shock at how the officer who killed her son returned to service within a day. And she described the emotional trauma of being targeted with threats and hate mail in the wake of mass protests that followed Mike’s murder.  

“The PTSD is overwhelming. I do have three remaining children. I was very scared and nervous to let them out of my sight for weeks after Mike was killed. I received tons and tons of threatening letters. It got so bad where my lawyers had to look through my mail before I looked through it.”

RFKHR’s President Kerry Kennedy, Senior Vice President Wade McMullen, and Staff Attorney Delia Addo-Yobo argued that the United States violated the human rights of Mike Brown and Lezley McSpadden by senselessly killing Mike and failing to pursue accountability afterward. 

“Never once did officer Wilson reach for his Mace, his flashlight, his baton or any other non-lethal instrument,” Kennedy said, “Instead, he drew his gun, shot Mike, chased him down and emptied nearly all his bullets into the body of the unarmed teenager.”

Kennedy stressed that none of the Ferguson police officers tried to aid Brown after he was shot. She also noted the systemic nature of extrajudicial killings by U.S. police, pointing to other cases of police-involved shootings across the country as examples of a pattern of disregard for Black lives, saying, “We will undoubtedly hear from the state a litany of all the things they have done to address the scourge of racist police violence in this country over the last 10 years, some of which I commend them for doing. Is it enough when more people were killed by police in 2023 than any other previously recorded year? The answer is no.”

The commission will publish a report with legal conclusions about the United States’ violation of Mike and Ms. McSpadden’s human rights and recommendations for legal reform to ensure similar violations are not repeated. Ms. McSpadden hopes that the Commission will provide Mike the justice that the United States has failed to bring.