On March 29, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed (5 – 4) a judg­ment of $14 mil­lion against the District Attorney’s Office of New Orleans for with­hold­ing evi­dence in the case of John Thompson. Thompson had been con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death but was lat­er exon­er­at­ed after the with­held evi­dence, cast­ing seri­ous doubt about his guilt, was revealed through the work of a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor. Thompson spent 18 years in prison includ­ing 14 years on death row, and faced immi­nent exe­cu­tion sev­er­al times. He sued the D.A.‘s office for vio­la­tion of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. However, Justice Clarence Thomas, writ­ing for the major­i­ty, held that Thompson did not prove that the entire dis­trict attorney’s office was respon­si­ble for the indi­vid­ual pros­e­cu­tors’ neg­li­gence. “[T]he only issue before us is whether [D.A.] Connick, as the pol­i­cy­mak­er for the dis­trict attorney’s office, was delib­er­ate­ly indif­fer­ent to the need to train the attor­neys under his author­i­ty,” Thomas wrote. The Court held that a dis­trict attorney’s office can­not be held respon­si­ble for fail­ure to train its pros­e­cu­tors based on a sin­gle vio­la­tion of the stan­dards requir­ing them to turn over to the defense any evi­dence that would cast doubts on the defendant’s guilt or sen­tence. (Brady v. Maryland).

Four Justices dis­sent­ed. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that fail­ure to train pros­e­cu­tors amount­ed to delib­er­ate indif­fer­ence to the defendant’s rights. ​“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.” The with­held evi­dence showed that the main infor­mant against Thompson in a pri­or case received a reward from the victim’s fam­i­ly, the eye­wit­ness iden­ti­fi­ca­tion accounts did not match Thompson’s descrip­tion, and a blood sam­ple tak­en from the crime scene did not match Thompson’s blood type.

(Connick v. Thompson, No. 09 – 571 (March 29, 2011); Editorial, ​“Failure of Empathy and Justice,” New York Times, March 31, 2011; D. Lithwick, ​“Cruel But Not Unusual,” Slate​.com, April 1, 2011). See U.S. Supreme Court and Innocence.

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