misdirection

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Inaccurate aim.
• noun Incorrect instructions or directions.
• noun Law An error made by a judge in charging a jury.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of misdirecting, or the state of being misdirected; wrong direction; an erroneous indication, guidance, or instruction: as, the misdirection of a letter; a judge's misdirections to the jury.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun The act of directing wrongly, or the state of being so directed.
• noun (Law) An error of a judge in charging the jury on a matter of law.
• noun The direction of another's attention to an unimportant place or matter, for the purpose of being able to perform an action undetected.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun An act of misleading, of convincing someone to concentrate in an incorrect direction.
• noun UK, law An error of law within a judgement committed by a judge or judges of a lower court, particularly as found by an appeals court

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun management that is careless or inefficient
• noun incorrect directions or instructions
• noun the act of distracting; drawing someone's attention away from something
• noun an incorrect charge to a jury given by a judge