In a 5-4 decision, Supreme Court rules it was OK for DAs to withhold evidence

Long story short--man found guilty of armed robbery and later found guilty of murder; gets sentenced to prison for 18 years ago (all but four years spent on death row). Five attorneys in the DA's office withheld evidence that would have overturned his conviction in the first case, and so his armed robbery conviction kept him from wanting to testify in his murder case (so that his previous conviction wouldn't make him look more guilty). The evidence exonerating him from the armed robbery comes up 14 years into his sentence and then in a retrial he is found innocent in the murder trial.

SCOTUS ruled 5-4 that the DA's office can't be held liable for this suppression of evidence unless it's a pattern of misconduct. Even though it was quite clearly a pattern of misconduct since it was done by five different attorneys in the DA's office for 14 fucking years.

This is why you don't give the government the power to execute its citizens.

Nice totally false and misleading thread title.

I don't understand this.

The guy was unwilling to testify at his murder trial because he was convicted of armed robbery?

Shouldn't he be happily copping to the armed robbery if it meant avoiding death row?

And if he was guilty of murder anyway, what is the big deal?

So basically it's okay for prosecutors to now commit Brady violations as long as they don't make habits of them? No worries prosecutors, you can use as many dirty tricks as you want. -Love SCOTUS. (we've gone nuts, and most of us aren't even 75 yet!!!)

And now, in the voice of America's vacation/CD/cookbook giveaway lady-


IT'S A RULING FROM THE SAME PEOPLE WHO GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO SCREAM INTO CEMETERIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND AND... EVERYONE IS GOING HOME WITH A COPY OF THE DIRTY TRICKS LAWBOOK SIGNED BY ALL NINE JUSTICES!!!!!!!!!

From the OP

Very different from Timma's thread title.

Not saying I agree with this decision, but it does not say what Timmy alleged.

I can't agree with this one. It's a clear violation of Brady material. DA policy to hell, they make you go to law school and earn a J.D. for a reason. If you have knowledge of exonerating evidence and fail to turn it over, you're violating a SCOTUS determination from Brady v. Maryland. So now they're ruling against their own precedents. This Court is going completely nuts. What their ruling basically says is "hey prosecutors, that shit about turning over everything to the defense...screw it. Do whatever you have to do to win." I wonder how many lawyers disbarred over stuff like this will now get their licenses back and records expunged?

I take issue that the bloodwork "proved his innocence"--although I'll allow that I don't have all the facts. And I imagine it isn't like they yanked this guy out of choir practice or feeding widows and orphans. I suspect he's gotten away with things that would've landed him in the can. That said, it is an interesting story and I'm not sure where I stand on it.

Well what a nice misleading thread title.

All police / prosecution services are prone to behave in this way. Human beings are corrupt.

Ever heard of the Guildford Four? "Not to be shown to the defence". If you haven't, watch In The Name Of The Father.

It's also one of the reasons I've always been a staunch opponent of judicial capital punishment, FWIW. If Britain had retained it for just ten years longer than it did, the Guildford four would be dead. Innocent, but just as dead as if they'd been guilty as sin.

I agree completely with beginning of your post. The problem is that was not the issue before SCOTUS according to the OP. The sole question was regarding training by the person in charge and if he was negligent. No one says the prosecutors were correct and not in violation of the law. The guy seems to have sued on the basis of negligent or deliberate bad training.

The Supreme Court decides the case that's in front of them and what was at issue in that case WASN'T the hiding of exculpatory evidence, but rather WHO could be held accountable for that and for HOW MUCH.

Mr. Thompson (the unfairly convicted) sued Mr. Connick (the district attorney) on the basis that this suppression of evidence happened because of Mr. Connick's policies on prosecutor training. The decision says that this was direct malfeasance by a prosecutor and would've overcome any training policy that Mr. Connick would've had.

Like a lot of SCOTUS decisions that sound strange--usually because people misleadingly summarize them--this one makes sense on deeper analysis.

Even though the thread title is misleading, it is true.

"Nothing you say will be used for you in a court of law."

What pattern is there though? We are talking about 5 members of the DA's office out of how many total? Are all the DA's pulling the same type of crap? Is the District Attorney pulling that crap? If not, then how exactly can you claim that there is a pattern of anything?

More than likely, the 5 that have done this will be held accountable for what they did. If that is the case, what exactly is the pattern you speak of?

This is one of the reasons for the lengthy appeals process when someone is sentenced to death Timmy.

How many does it take to become a pattern? 10? 20? 100?

I'd argue that just one is bad enough, but the fact that this happened with five different attorneys in the DA's office shows the exact pattern of misconduct and poor training that the suit alleged.

Seriously? For the type of conclusion you have drawn, it would have to be the majority of the office including the DA themselves. At this point, unless you can point to some other piece of evidence and information, that simply doesn't seem to be the case here.

It shows a pattern of misconduct with the people involved. More than likely if they are still employed, they will not be for much longer. Because of what they did, they will probably be prosecuted themselves.

So, no, at this point, this is not a reflection of the DA's office. This is a reflection of these particular members. Don't worry, they will probably be prosecuted with felonies for what they have done, as well as for conspiracy considering the number that was involved.

Timmeh's shilling for the lawyers who wanted the millions.

Undoubtedly their upstanding citizen client would have made at least that much in the interim if he hadn't been wrongfully incarcerated.

To break down the decision a little from a quick skim of the opinion:

The wrongly convicted guy sued Harry Connick (father of jazz pianist HC Jr., btw) alleging that Harry Connick had failed to train his prosecutors in how/when to turn over exculpatory evidence and that failure led to a violation of his civil rights.

He sued on that theory and won.

The SCOTUS majority, however, said there are two ways to win such a suit.

One is that a pattern of behavior by underlings would have to make obvious to the policy maker the need for training to the policymaker. And even though four cases prior to this one were overturned on the same general issue, the SCOTUS majority said they were different enough from this one that it wouldn't have made it obvious to HC that there was a need to train his attorneys about turning over exculpatory evidence.

The other is essentially where the need for training is so blindingly obvious that you don't need to show a pattern existed to make a policymaker aware of the need for training. The example cited is where a police chief would turn cops out on the street without teaching them to respect constitutional limits on the use of force.

SCOTUS reasoned that this case is different enough from the cops-on-the-street scenario that it doesn't fall into that second category either. It reasoned attorneys get a lot of training with regards to rights inherently by going to law school and doing continuing legal education, plus these attorneys were all aware of the general need to turn over exculpatory evidence.

Personally I disagree with the decision on both counts.

I don't know how many cases would be required to alert Connick to the need for training if four wasn't enough. And the fact that various prosecutors weren't sure if they needed to turn over a lab report that said the robber's blood was Type B (or whatever) when the defendant's type is O was something that needed to turn over makes it obvious that training was necessary.

The thread title is spot on. It was not one "miscreant prosecutor" who perpetrated this Brady violation. This was deliberate indifference by an incompetent and unaccountable DA's office, which as now been let off the hook by the deliberate indifference of right wing hacks.

So in this ruling the SCOTUS said DA's could keep evidence secret.

You are brainless and have no reading comprehension.

Well, they said that essentially you can't punish the DA's office for failing to train its people.

It's arguably "OK" if you don't have to pay millions of dollars when it happens and lands someone on death row who shouldn't be there.

Sure, the case against the guy still got thrown out, and hopefully he will get at least somewhat compensated for the years of his life he spent wrongly convicted.

But by removing the judgment against the DA, SCOTUS took away a huge incentive to instruct prosecutors in proper procedure and a huge disincentive for prosecutors to not share exculpatory evidence.

I hope so.

All the SCOTUS ruled is that he was not "deliberately indifferent" to training. The lawsuit filed by this guy was poorly thought out.

Did the court say that the DA's responsble for this cannot be held responsible?

No. Read the article. That's not what the case says.

I'm not sure what you're getting at.

To show that he was "deliberately indifferent" to training, the plaintiff had hypothetically two paths as I said in an earlier post:

1. The need for training was made obvious by a pattern of problems.

I would argue that four previous cases being overturned on that issue in his office alone (in addition to however many cases have been overturned in other prosecutors' offices nationwide due to Brady violations) should be considered enough to make it obvious that there was a need for such training. Apparently SCOTUS disagrees.

2. The need for training was basically inherently obvious.

The majority essentially danced around the notion of the need for training being obvious by saying lawyers already get plenty of generalized training.

It really is more analgous to sending police officers out without training them in the basics of limits on the use of force IMO, though.

In any event, I was talking about the effect of their ruling, more than the ruling itself.

I have a hard time envisioning a scenario where you can sue the government without a smoking-gun memo showing deliberate indifference.

The ruling -- as far as I skimmed -- had little to nothing to do with the front-line DA who withheld the report or any of the subsequent DAs who apparently aided in the withholding of the report. That wasn't an issue before SCOTUS.

The trouble is that even presuming that he can sue the individual DAs for ruining his life, they are presumably in no way or shape able to compensate for what he has lost.

Even $14 million IMO is not enough to be falsely accused of murder and imprisoned on Death Row for more than a decade.

^ There are several possibilities. We do not know what if any steps Connick took to train his staff. It also strikes me that deliberate indifference is a high standard to prove. This rule is a basic precept taught in law school. Their repeated pattern of violation is perhaps a greater indicator that they should have been fired than trained. Again, I think this guy had a lousy lawyer who fucked up the lawsuit.

From what I understood of the ruling, Connick did not offer any training on Brady, although his prosecutors were aware of it.

Deliberate indifference is a high standard, and I don't have an issue with that. But as I said, this ruling would appear to make it more or less impossible to meet without the policymaker mustache-twirling and saying, "I'm deliberately indifferent to the need for training."

I don't think "deliberate indifference" is something that is a "basic precept" taught in law school. At least, I can't think off the top of my head a class or a case that specifically taught it. This is in the area of civil rights, and that of course isn't a fundamental course in law school in the way that civil procedure, crim law or torts is.

As for the lousiness of the lawyering, it couldn't have been too bad if it convinced a jury to give the guy $14 mil AND an appellate court to side with him.

^ I meant the basic laws if disclosure are taught at law school. I don't see this as a big deal as most lawyers are not as stupid as the one he employed.

Once again, I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Once again, I find it hard to consider him stupid when he won at every level until SCOTUS.

Maybe he should have proceeded on a different theory in addition to this one, but it seems like in the absence of this decision, there wasn't much wrong with this one.

Where exactly was he stupid?