"The full opinion can be read here. The Thompson majority opinion has already been called “one of the meanest Supreme Court opinions ever” by Dalia Lithwick of Slate. Andrew Cohen at The Atlantic is somewhat more moderate, writing that “[t]his, indeed, was a bitterly-fought case. And it’s ultimately a decision from the Court’s majority that reveals outright hostility to the rights of the wrongfully convicted to adequately redress their conceded grievances. You would think such redress would be the least the law could do for men like Thompson.”
COMMENTARY: HARVARD CIVIL RIGHTS/CIVIL LIBERTIES JOURNAL;
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BACKGROUND: 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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"John Thompson was convicted of murder in New Orleans in 1985," the Harvard Civil Rights/Civil Liberties commentary published on April 2, 2011 begins, under the heading, "Clarence Thomas to Wrongfully Convicted Louisiana Death Row Inmate: “You Get Nothing.”
"After a trial where he opted not to testify on his behalf, Thompson was sentenced to death," the commentary continues.
"He spent the next 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row. Only a few weeks before his execution in 1999, a defense investigator learned that a cancer-stricken member of the prosecution had confessed on his deathbed to having withheld crime lab results from the defense, as well as removing a blood sample from the evidence room. In addition to this, Thompson’s defense learned that the New Orleans District Attorney’s office, led by Harry Connick Sr. (yes, the singer’s father), had also failed to disclose the fact that Thompson was implicated in the murder by a person who received a reward from the victim’s family, and that an eyewitness identification did not match Thompson. On this evidence, Thompson’s conviction was overturned on appeal. On re-trial, a jury exonerated Thompson in only 35 minutes.
Thompson proceeded to sue Connick, who conceded that his office did indeed commit a Brady violation in failing to reveal exculpatory evidence to Thompson’s defense. The trial jury found Connick failed to train his junior prosecutors on their Brady obligations and gave a verdict for Thompson of $14 million in civil rights damages plus $1 million in attorneys’ fees added by the judge. The 5th Circuit upheld and affirmed the trial court.
Thompson’s damages, however, evaporated on March 29, 2011–more than two decades after his conviction–when the Supreme Court, in Harry F. Connick, District Attorney, et al., v. John Thompson, a 5-4 opinion penned by the ever-quiet Justice Clarence Thomas, reversed, finding that a single Brady violation is not enough to result in § 1983 liability. According to Justice Thomas, “[t]he District Court should have granted Connick judgment as a matter of law on the failure-to-train claim because Thompson did not prove a pattern of similar violations that would “establish that the ‘policy of inaction’ [was] the functional equivalent of a decision by the city itself to violate the Constitution.” (citations omitted)
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent tore into Thomas’s opinion, arguing that Connick and his staff committed not just one Brady violation, but so many as to establish a pattern severe enough that “a fact trier could reasonably conclude that inattention to Brady was standard operating procedure at the District Attorney’s Office.”
In response, Justice Antonin Scalia’s aimed his majority concurrence at Justice Ginsburg, writing in a footnote that “[n]one of [the facts presented by Ginsburg of systemic deficient training in Brady procedure at Connick's office are] relevant. Thompson’s failure-to-train theory at trial was not based on a pervasive culture of indifference to Brady, but rather on the inevitability of mistakes over enough iterations of criminal trials.”
The full opinion can be read here. The Thompson majority opinion has already been called “one of the meanest Supreme Court opinions ever” by Dalia Lithwick of Slate. Andrew Cohen at The Atlantic is somewhat more moderate, writing that “[t]his, indeed, was a bitterly-fought case. And it’s ultimately a decision from the Court’s majority that reveals outright hostility to the rights of the wrongfully convicted to adequately redress their conceded grievances. You would think such redress would be the least the law could do for men like Thompson.”
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The commentary can be found at:
http://harvardcrcl.org/2011/04/02/clarence-thomas-to-wrongfully-convicted-louisiana-death-row-inmate-you-get-nothing/
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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;
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