Death Row Exoneree Requests DOJ Investigation of Systemic Prosecutorial Misconduct in Louisiana

Louisiana death row exoneree John Thompson (pictured, center), who was wrongly convicted of two different New Orleans murders as a result of prosecutorial misconduct, has filed a petition with the United States Department of Justice seeking an investigation of more than 100 cases prosecuted by former Orleans Parish assistant district attorney James Williams. Thompson filed his petition on August 2 under provisions of the Law Enforcement Misconduct Statute, which makes it a violation of federal law for police or prosecutors to engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives individuals of their constitutional rights. Thompson’s petition alleges that Williams “grossly violated his duty, the power entrusted to him and the constitutional rights of countless defendants he prosecuted,” including five cases in which death sentences Williams obtained were later overturned for official misconduct. Thompson was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in 1985. He was exonerated in 2003 after his attorney uncovered crucial blood analysis evidence that had been improperly withheld by the Orelans Parish District Attorney’s office. In 2007, a jury awarded him $14 million in damages in a suit he filed against the prosecutor’s office, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that award by a 5-4 vote in 2011, expanding the scope of individual prosecutorial immunity and finding that Thompson had not proven that the district attorney’s office itself was responsible for the individual prosecutors’ negligence. In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, “What happened here … was no momentary oversight, no single incident of a lone officer’s misconduct. Instead, the evidence demonstrated that misperception and disregard of Brady’s disclosure requirements were pervasive in Orleans Parish.” Thompson said his new petition was prompted in part by concern for defendants who were prosecuted by Williams but did not receive a death sentence. “I was blessed to be on Death Row because it gave me access to attorneys, who eventually proved my innocence,” he said. “If I weren’t given a death sentence, I’d still be in Angola. My question is: What happened to the 95 or more men who Williams prosecuted but didn’t get a death sentence? Where are they now?” Emily Maw, director of the Innocence Project New Orleans, said that New Orleans has the highest exoneration rate per capita in the country. Despite that fact, she said, “no state entity has taken it upon themselves to identify that this is a problem.”

(J. Lipinski, “Death row exoneree files request for federal investigation of Orleans DA’s office,” The Times-Picayune, August 2, 2016.) See Prosecutorial Misconduct.