ST. LOUIS (AP) – A three-judge Missouri Court of Appeals panel says a judge correctly dismissed a lawsuit that sought an independent probe of a prosecutor’s handling of grand jury proceedings in the Ferguson police shooting of Michael Brown.

The panel in St. Louis ruled last week that a St. Louis County judge was “well within his discretion” in deciding not to appoint a special prosecutor to scrutinize the actions of county prosecutor Robert McCulloch.

Several activists sued for an outside review of McCulloch’s handling of the grand jury that in November 2014 cleared white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in Brown’s death three months earlier.

The grand jury decision sparked sometimes-violent protests in Ferguson similar to the unrest that occurred in the St. Louis suburb immediately after the unarmed, black 18-year-old was killed.