Yes, you read that right. The grand jury was instructed to indict Michael Brown for assaulting a police officer. Not technically, of course, because Michael Brown is dead.
This is from Sheila Whirley's instructions just before the grand jury began its deliberations:
Now, what makes this a little bit different is that if you will look on page, the first page, it talks about assault of a law enforcement officer in the first degree. And that's part of the indictment because the officer is saying he was arresting him for assaulting him.
So that's what you would be considering in your deliberation and we have provided you with definitions of assault in the first degree, on the second page is assault in the second degree and the third degree. And then also a law enforcement officer's use of force in making an arrest. An officer can use force in making an arrest, got that laid out for you.
Vol. 24, page 134-35 (emphasis added). Right after that, Alizadeh jumps in to make her "correction" regarding the deadly force statute.
This is madness.
Not that it mattered to the prosecution, but it was Wilson's burden to raise the deadly force statute as his defense. At trial.
Neither did it matter that what happened between Brown and Wilson was not some separate and isolated event but, rather, one point in a sequence of events that comprise the whole case that should have been heard by a jury. At trial.
The long and the short of it is simple: the grand jury was instructed to find that Michael Brown, a dead kid who literally cannot raise his voice in his own defense, committed a crime.