On October 6, the U.S. Supreme Court heard argu­ments in Connick v. Thompson. John Thompson, who was released from death row in 2003 after new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence under­mined his mur­der con­vic­tion, sued the New Orleans District Attorney’s office for fail­ing to train its attor­neys about their legal oblig­a­tion to turn over evi­dence that could help defen­dants prove their inno­cence. Thompson’s lawyers dis­cov­ered that pros­e­cu­tors delib­er­ate­ly cov­ered up incon­sis­ten­cies in eye­wit­ness state­ments and with­held police lab reports regard­ing Thompson. He was award­ed $14 mil­lion. Thompson was a month away from exe­cu­tion before the evi­dence was uncov­ered. According to a USA TODAY inves­ti­ga­tion of 201 fed­er­al cas­es since 1997 where pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct was found, not a sin­gle fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor was dis­barred as a result and only one was pros­e­cut­ed. He was acquitted..

Former solic­i­tor gen­er­al Paul Clement, along with oth­er for­mer Justice Department offi­cials, not­ed in a brief sup­port­ing the mon­e­tary award that ​“pros­e­cu­tors face no threat of legal con­se­quences for depriv­ing crim­i­nal defen­dants of their rights” in cas­es where they have with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence. Without allow­ing defen­dants the abil­i­ty to sue, Clement said, ​“the ques­tion real­ly does become whether there’s any deter­rent for a violation.”

(B. Heath and K. McCoy, ​“Prosecuting offices’ immu­ni­ty test­ed,” USA Today, October 6, 2010). See Innocence, Prosecutorial Misconduct, and U.S. Supreme Court.

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