"Justices Appear Ready to Hold New Orleans Prosecutors Liable for Misconduct," is the title of Tony Mauro's report for the National Law Journal, yesterday.
Supreme Court justices on Wednesday appeared ready to give the green light to efforts by a New Orleans man to win compensation for prosecutorial misconduct that put him behind bars for more than two decades for a murder he did not commit.
The Court heard arguments in the case of Connick v. Thompson in which former New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick maintains that his office should not be held liable for what he contends was a single incident of failing to hand over exculpatory evidence to the defense before trial.
Louisiana appellate chief Stuart Duncan, arguing against liability, acknowledged that defendant John Thompson has suffered "terrible injuries" because of the actions of a lawyer in the prosecutor's office, but insisted that Supreme Court precedent does not allow Thompson to recover damages in a civil rights suit when no pattern of misconduct has been shown.
But several justices argued that by their reading of the record, at least four assistant prosecutors were aware that key blood evidence had been withheld, in violation of Brady v. Maryland, the 1963 decision that requires prosecutors to disclose exculpatory evidence to criminal defendants.
Another basis of the lawsuit is that Connick showed deliberate indifference by failing to train lawyers in the office on the importance of complying with Brady.
"It wasn't one rogue prosecutor," said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, adding that there were "multiple opportunities" for the prosecution to turn over the evidence to Thompson's defense. "To shoehorn this into a single incident, it doesn't fit."
"There were four incidents here," said Justice Stephen Breyer. "And therefore, I don't have to try to make up weird hypotheticals." Duncan asserted that it should be viewed as one incident "that possibly could have involved one to four prosecutors."
The AP report is, "Court seems skeptical on $14 million judgment," by Jesse Holland. It's via Google News.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed skeptical of a $14 million judgment given to a former death row inmate who accused New Orleans prosecutors of withholding evidence to help convict him of murder.
John Thompson, who at one point was only weeks away from being executed, successfully sued the district attorney's office in New Orleans, arguing that former District Attorney Harry Connick showed deliberate indifference by not providing adequate training for assistant district attorneys.
Prosecutors normally have immunity for their actions while working, but Thompson convinced a jury that the district attorney's office had not trained its lawyers sufficiently on how to handle evidence. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was split evenly on appeal, which upheld the lower court verdict.
"They all knew what not to produce. What they didn't know was what to produce," Thompson's lawyer J. Gordon Cooney said.
But justices repeatedly questioned how much training would be enough to satisfy any new legal standard on Brady rights for prosecutors. Brady rights are named after the Supreme Court's Brady v. Maryland case, which says prosecutors violate a defendant's constitutional rights by not turning over evidence that could prove a person's innocence.
USA Today coverage is, "Justices question DA's liability for misconduct," By Brad Heath.
Supreme Court justices questioned Wednesday whether additional training would have prevented the constitutional violations that put a New Orleans man on death row for a murder he didn't commit.
The man, John Thompson, was convicted of a 1984 murder and a separate carjacking. He was set free 18 years later after his lawyers discovered that the New Orleans prosecutors who put him on trial had deliberately concealed evidence — a blood sample taken at the scene of the carjacking — that could have proved his innocence.
Once he was free, Thompson sued the Orleans Parish district attorney's office, alleging that his rights were violated because prosecutors were poorly trained. He won a $14 million judgment from a jury. The district attorney's office appealed to the Supreme Court.
During oral arguments, several of the justices questioned Thompson's lawyer about exactly what former district attorney Harry Connick Sr. — father of singer Harry Connick Jr. — should have done to prevent the violations.
Justice Samuel Alito asked Thompson's attorney, Gordon Cooney, what training he would provide if he were in charge of the district attorney's office. Chief Justice John Roberts asked whether officials also should be required to train prosecutors about the constitutional rules that limit their closing arguments during criminal trials or how to comply with other rules.
"Our course is expanding," Justice Anthony Kennedy quipped, adding that if prosecutors violated Thompson's rights intentionally, no training would have stopped them.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, herself a former prosecutor in New York, asked whether an hour of annual training would be enough. "Could you please state in simple terms to me what they failed to train these prosecutors to do?" she said.
Cooney struggled to answer. He said that at a minimum, prosecutors should be taught that they must tell defendants about the existence of physical evidence that could conclusively prove their innocence. He said prosecutors in the New Orleans office "all knew what not to produce. What they didn't know was what to produce."
The court has ruled before that individual prosecutors cannot be sued for courtroom violations like those in Thompson's trial. It left open the possibility that prosecutors' offices could be sued for violations caused by official policies or a lack of training.
The Supreme Court held almost 50 years ago in a case called Brady v. Maryland that prosecutors must tell defendants about evidence that points toward their innocence. The attorney representing the district attorney's office, Kyle Duncan, said it is "impossible to determine beforehand exactly why a Brady violation will occur, and what specific training measures would prevent it from occurring."
The SCOTUS Blog case file contains all briefing and the oral argument transcript.
Earlier coverage of the case is here. One article not linked is Slate's excellent, "Innocent on Death Row," by John Hollway. USA Today's series on prosecutorial misconduct is here.
As noted above, the responsibility of the state to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense was articulated in the 1963 Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland; more on the ruling via Justia and at Oyez.
Comments