A lawyer for Johannes Mehserle, the ex-BART cop who shot and killed Oscar Grant, an unarmed black man, while he lay face-down on a train platform, has asked for a retrial. Mehserle’s defense attorney, Michael Rains, argued that the Alameda County district attorney's office misled jurors when prosecutor David Stein told jurors that there had never been an incident of Taser confusion that had led to a suspect's death. Much of Mehserle's defense rested on the claim that he accidentally pulled out his Sig Sauer gun when he meant to pull out his Taser, and that he never meant to kill the 23-year-old father that night. Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter this summer by a Los Angeles jury after a four-week trial. He faced second-degree murder charges for killing Grant on New Year’s Day 2009. We've learned that prosecutorial misconduct is common in California, yet is rarely addressed. If the district attorney did mislead jurors, we wonder if they'll actually do something about it this time in order to help Mehserle, a former police officer.
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