The attorneys for former Bart police officer Johannes Mehserle, who killed Oscar Grant on New Years Day, are asking the Alameda County Superior Court judge to disqualify District Attorney Tom Orloff and his office from the case. The lawyers say that Orloff violated state and federal laws, State Bar ethics rules, and the Constitution when he sent two Oakland officers to question Mehserle in Nevada without his attorney present. Based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1964, these circumstances would ordinarily result in any evidence obtained in the illegal questioning being suppressed, but Mehserle had invoked his right to remain silent and refused to speak to the officers. Laurie Levenson, a law professor at Loyola University in Los Angeles and a former federal prosecutor, told the Chronicle that removing an entire prosecutor's office from a case for a violation would be extreme. "I think most judges would have a stern talking-to with the prosecutor, but if there's no evidence to suppress, that would be the end of it." State Attorney General Jerry Brown would take over the prosecution if Orloff's office were to be removed.