"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.""
REPORTER BRAD HEATH: USA TODAY;
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BACKGROUND TO APPEAL: The case concerning a prisoner's exoneration is Connick v. Thompson, 09-571, which arose from a $14 million jury award in favor of a former inmate who was freed after prosecutorial misconduct came to light. The former inmate, John Thompson, sued officials in the district attorney's office in New Orleans, saying they had not trained prosecutors to turn over exculpatory evidence. A prosecutor there failed to give Mr. Thompson's lawyers a report showing that blood at a crime scene was not his. Mr. Thompson spent 18 years in prison, 14 in solitary confinement. He once came within weeks of being executed.
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"WASHINGTON — 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 USA Today story by reporter Brad Heath published earlier today under the heading, "Court questions $14 million judgment in unjust prosecution," begins.
"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," the story continues.
"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."
Thompson was charged with the 1984 killing of a New Orleans hotel executive and an armed carjacking outside the Louisiana Superdome. Juries convicted him of both crimes, and he was sentenced to be executed for the murder.
But a month before Thompson was scheduled to be executed in 1999, an investigator working for his lawyers found a copy of a crime lab report about blood evidence that police had found at the scene of the carjacking. The blood type was B; Thompson was type O. Prosecutors in New Orleans had known about the report before his trial and hid it from Thompson and his attorneys.
As a result, a court threw out the carjacking charge. Thompson was retried for the murder in 2003, and was acquitted.
The abuses that helped put him in prison are similar to violations USA TODAY uncovered in an investigation of misconduct by federal prosecutors. The newspaper documented 201 cases since 1997 in which federal judges found that prosecutors had violated laws or ethics rules.
Among the violations USA TODAY identified, failing to turn over evidence favorable to defendants was the most common.
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The story can be found at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2010-10-06-prosecutors_N.htm
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be accessed at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
For a breakdown of some of the cases, issues and controversies this Blog is currently following, please turn to:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=120008354894645705&postID=8369513443994476774
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
