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A USA TODAY investigation:

Misconduct at the Justice Department

Court questions $14 million judgment in

unjust prosecution
Updated 15m ago | Comments 38 | Recommend 3 E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |

By Brad Heath, USA TODAY

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WASHINGTON — Supreme Court

Enlarge By Jennifer S. Altman for USA
TODAY
John Thompson was on death row for more than a
decade before his lawyers discovered that the New
Orleans prosecutors who put him on trial had illegally
concealed evidence that could help prove his
innocence.
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justices questioned Wednesday
whether additional training would have Add to Mixx
prevented the constitutional violations
that put a New Orleans man on death Facebook
row for a murder he didn't commit.
Twitter
The man, John Thompson, was
convicted of a 1984 murder and a More
separate carjacking. He was set free
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18 years later after his lawyers
discovered that the New Orleans
myYahoo
prosecutors who put him on trial had
deliberately concealed evidence — a iGoogle
blood sample taken at the scene of the
More
carjacking — that could have proved
his innocence.

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.

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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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Updated 15m ago E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions |

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Comments: (38) Showing: Newest first New: Most recommended!

rjtdh (23 friends, send message) wrote: 12m ago

The real JOKE is the Supreme Court has already ruled previously that Prosecutors are
protected even if they commit fraud or criminal acts themselves in a prosecution.
Why do regular people have any faith whatsoever in this court ?

Recommend | Report Abuse

rjtdh (23 friends, send message) wrote: 16m ago

The current Conservative Block on the Supreme Court will ensure that the courts will never be
held accountable !

Recommend | Report Abuse

rjtdh (23 friends, send message) wrote: 19m ago

The courts are never going to hold the courts ACCOUNTABLE. Just everyone else !

Recommend | Report Abuse

James Price (43 friends, send message) wrote: 43m ago

The prosecutors should be tried and sent to jail for the time he served.

Recommend | Report Abuse

quotelawrence (11 friends, send message) wrote: 1h 15m ago

this is a very deep issue one of a paramount importance the prosecutors argue they must
have leverage to push tough cases, yet the defendant was innocent and the prosecutor
commited fraud, we are not addressing the issues should the prosecutor be able and
encouraged to prosecute when he / she has commited a case of fraud by hiding evidence or
ignoring facts, this is either going to be a decision that prosecutors have the responsibility of
prosecuting from facts or they will be punished for committing Fraud,

Recommend | Report Abuse

Amerman (119 friends, send message) wrote: 2h 54m ago

Vonnie932 (1 friends, send message) wrote: 2h 25m ago
What happened to Justice for all. The law is for those who can pay for American law. What a
country! We can only be a world leader when we live to fulfill the consitiution and rights for all
Americans.
===============
Thompson was a drug dealer convicted of Armed Robbery, who was found possessing the
murdered man's stolen gold jewelry, possessing the murder weapon, there was a eye witness
of Thompson killing the man, and Thompson failed to have a single alibi/story/witness of
where he was at the time of the crime.
Any jury in America would have convicted him...

You show me a high-crime, high drug use, high unemployed, high broken family, high welfare
population, and I'll show you a longtime, entrenched Democrat governance.... New Orleans,

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2010-10-06-prosecutors_N.htm Page 2 of 3
Court questions $14 million judgment in unjust prosecution - USATODAY.com 10/7/10 2:44 AM

Newark, Detroit, Oakland, Plilly, etc etc..

Dems=corruption, incompetence, dysfunction

The jury at the time found him guilty beyond reasonable time, as they should have...
Remember that New Orleans is the 'chocolate city', and it is near impossible to get any black
man convicted of a violent crime....
That is why New Orleans has been one of the murder capitols of the nation for decades.

Recommend | Report Abuse

handyandy4 (0 friends, send message) wrote: 2h 58m ago

Bakalakadaka (135 friends, send message) wrote: 3h 22m ago
handyandy4 (0 friends, send message) wrote: 1h 8m ago
all anyone has to do is look at the slob and you can forget about his constitutional rights. if he
didn't do what he was tried for, he did something else. close enough.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ahhhhhh, the "looks-like-a-criminal" argument.
__________________________________

yep, same as the quacks like a duck argument. works for me...

Recommend | Report Abuse

Amerman (119 friends, send message) wrote: 3h 6m ago

LOL....
UsaToday should be convicted and imprisioned for what they FAIL to report, and LIES they
tell.
UsaToday fails to mention that:
. John Thompson was a drug dealer who had been CONVICTED OF A SEPERATE ARMED
ROBBERY before the murder....
. That John Thompson REFUSED TO TAKE THE STAND in his first trial to defend himself
. John Thompson was found possessing the murdered man's gold ring, and in POSSESSION
OF THE GUN USED IN THE MURDER
. Thompson offered no alibi, story, or witnesses in either the first or second trial to explain
where he was at the time of the crime.,

UsaToday LIES when they say that Thompson DIDN'T COMMIT THE MURDER; There is
ZERO EVIDENCE saying he didn't....
The jury at the time convicted him, beyond reasonable doubt, based on the evidence,
It is hardly surprising that a jury 20 years later could not convict beyond all doubt, hardly
unusual since the key witnesses had died, evidence had been lost, 20 years had passed,.
and suspicious 'new' witnesses showed up....

Now a man who almost surely commited the crime is trying to shakedown the judicial system
which he has evaded.

Recommend | Report Abuse

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