left laws inconsistent with the ruling on the books. Missouri was among those states that never changed its unrestricted deadly-force law. So when the St. Louis County prosecutors assigned to the grand jury investigating the shooting death of Michael Brown went to the law books, they found a statute that had not been changed since 1979, six years before the Supreme Court’s ruling. And the prosecutors gave grand jurors that law on Sept. 16 as Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson was about to testify before them and give his account of the fatal encounter with Brown. It was more than three months later, on Nov. 21, when prosecutor Kathi Alizadeh confessed error to the grand jurors. Alizadeh told the grand jurors that she and colleague Shelia Whirleyactions.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

When Detective Nick Amaro shot and seriously injured an unarmed black teenager on the TV program Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, the police brass and the district attorney’s office came down hard on him. Ignoring advice from his fellow officers, Amaro (played by actor Danny Pino) asked to go before the grand jury investigating the shooting to plead his case.
As seen in the Jan. 15, 2014, episode, Amaro faced hostile questions from grand jurors, but explained how he had mistaken a ricocheting bullet for the victim firing at one of his fellow officers. Amaro insisted he had followed police procedure in the shooting. His account, along with his distraught regret at the boy’s injuries, persuaded the grand jury not to indict him.
However fictitious the