The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a $14 mil­lion award to John Thompson, a for­mer death row inmate in Louisiana who was exon­er­at­ed after with­held evi­dence was revealed. Thompson spent 18 years in prison, includ­ing 14 years in the soli­tary con­fine­ment of death row in Angola Prison. He came with­in one month of being exe­cut­ed in 1999 when his attor­neys dis­cov­ered blood evi­dence that should have been turned over to the defense years ago. The new evi­dence cleared Thompson of an armed rob­bery con­vic­tion, which in turn had influ­enced his tri­al for an unre­lat­ed mur­der. At his re-tri­al on the cap­i­tal mur­der charge, Thompson was acquit­ted in thir­ty-five min­utes by a jury in 2003. Thompson sued the District Attorney’s Office of Orleans Parish in 2003 and won a jury ver­dict in 2007. The jury also award­ed $1 mil­lion for attor­neys’ fees.

The state argued that the $14 mil­lion award was exces­sive because Thompson did not suf­fer that much. The 5th Circuit reject­ed that notion, briefly describ­ing his years in confinement:

The evi­dence at tri­al showed that Thompson was arrest­ed when he was
twen­ty-two years old and was not released until he was forty. He spent the first
two and a half years in the Orleans Parish Prison, where he was housed with the
hard core crim­i­nals, four or five to a cell. He wit­nessed mul­ti­ple rapes and lived
in fear of becom­ing a vic­tim him­self. During his time at the Orleans Parish
Prison he received only two vis­its from his family.

In 1987, Thompson was trans­ferred to the Angola State Penitentiary,
where he was kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment. He spent twen­ty-three hours a day
in a six-by-nine-foot cell with no win­dows or air con­di­tion­ing. Upon enter­ing his
cell for the first time, he found per­son­al items from its pre­vi­ous occu­pant, who
had been exe­cut­ed sev­er­al days before. There were mul­ti­ple men­tal­ly deranged
pris­on­ers near him who would yell and scream at all hours and throw human
waste at the guards. Indeed, sev­er­al wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied to the stench that
per­me­at­ed the prison. Thompson grew to know many of his fel­low inmates and
was aware when they were exe­cut­ed. Thompson him­self was giv­en
approx­i­mate­ly six exe­cu­tion dates dur­ing his time there and, as stat­ed ear­li­er,
came with­in one month of his final exe­cu­tion date. While at Angola, he received
approx­i­mate­ly four vis­its a year from friends and family.

(Thompson v. Harry F. Connick, et al., No. 07 – 30443 (5th Cir. Dec. 19, 2008)). Since 1973, 130 peo­ple have been exon­er­at­ed and freed from death row, includ­ing 8 from Louisiana. Many of those who have been freed have received no com­pen­sa­tion. See Innocence and Arbitrariness.

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