More shocking incompetence -- or bias -- in the Ferguson prosecution

Credit Lawrence O'Donnell for his scoop in reporting this on msnbc's "Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell" last week, repeated again on his December 1st broadcast.

Although District Attorney Bob McCulloch gave the press conference and revealed the grand jury's decision in the Darren Wilson case, the primary prosecutor conducting the hearing for the grand jury was Assistance District Attorney Kathy Alizadeh.

DA McCulloch's decision to release the full, unedited transcript of the grand jury hearings was ostensibly in the service of transparency, designed to build trust into the process.   Unfortunately -- for everyone, including the DA and his assistants -- it did exactly the opposite, because it exposed the truth of the obvious bias on the part of McCulloch and his team.

The transcript reveals, over and over again, that during Officer Darren Wilson's testimony, he is rarely asked any skeptical questions by the assistant district attorney;  but, with witnesses whose testimony conflicts with Wilson's, she often bores in and challenges them.   That, of course, is on top of the highly unusual step of allowing an accused to testify -- which in effect turned an indictment presentation into a mini-trial WITHOUT a judge, opposing lawyers, or cross-examination of witnesses.

In short, it was a set-up to get an official stamp of non-indictment of the police officer.   But that's only background to what O'Donnell revealed on "Last Work."   It gets worse.

The more damning question is:   Did Assistant DA Kathy Alizadeh deliberately mislead the grand jurors -- or was it a case of colossal incompetence -- that she gave them a printed copy of a 1979 law that had been deemed unconstitutional in 1985 by the United States Supreme Court?

And it was not just any law.   It was a law which stated the conditions under which a police officer may use force and may use deadly force.   Under that law, Officer Wilson would have been justified in shooting and killing Michael Brown simply because he was a suspect who was fleeing.  That is what the grand jurors were told was the law under which they must decide whether to indict Wilson -- and they were given this incorrect law just prior to hearing Wilson's testimony, the crucial time when jurors' opinions began of form.

LET ME BE CLEAR:    The grand jurors were given the wrong instructions about what law governed the decision they must make.  That error was not corrected for the entire time that they were hearing all the forensic evidence and all the witnesses testify, including the defendent himself.

It was not until the day they were to begin deliberating -- almost 3 months later, on November 21st -- that Alizadeh brought them a new print-out which she said was to replace what she had given them 'a long time ago and which, she said, was not entirely wrong, but there was something in it that wasn't correct;  so they should disregard that old copy she had given them.

She did not explain what was different and how that might affect their decision.    When one of the jurors asked her to clarify if this meant that the Supreme Court could over-rule a Missouri law, she said "Just don't worry about that."    And her colleague chimed in:  "We don't want to get into a law class."

This is not hearsay.   Anyone can read it in the transcript that McCulloch so proudly released to a skeptical public, hoping to gain their trust in his decision and the process.   He failed miserably -- and instead proves again just how clueless he is about the whole bias thing.

Like so many others have done, Lawrence O'Donnell and his staff combed through the transcript with a fine legal knowledge -- and they found this monkey business with the wrong law being given and the less than adequate correction of the error, way too late in the process.

Incompetence?    Or bias?    We may never know.

Ralph