Supreme Court to decide if prosecutors can be sued for misconductcondemning innocent

Carol Forsloff - The
Supreme Court on Wednesday is scheduled to decide whether prosecutors
can be sued for misconduct, especially in cases where innocent people
have been condemned to death because of it, stemming from the case of a
man from Louisiana.



 35 years ago, the
Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors can't be sued.  The decision then
is now being challenged because of the case of a New Orleans man who
came within 30 days of execution for a murder he did not commit. The
prosecutor was found to have withheld evidence revealing the man was
innocent.

The case of John Thompson, New Orleans, who was
sentenced to die for capital murder at the age of 22 was sufficiently
disturbing that a jury took only 35 minutes to find him innocent after
he had spent 14 years in prison and many times had faced execution,
before delays were granted.

At
the time of Thompson's original trial in
1984 no physical evidence was presented that linked Thompson to the
crime.  Furthermore the primary witness for the state was originally the
primary suspect in the murder.  That witness, however, cut a deal with
the prosecutor in order to get a lesser sentence.  Thompson's lawyers
Nick Trenticosta, Michael Banks and Gordon Cooney found microfilm
containing the results of blood typing the prosecutors had tried to
destroy before Mr. Thompson’s trial, among other issues of misconduct
found  by the prosecution during the trial.

 “Prosecutorial
misconduct is a serious problem, and nothing is being done to
adequately address it,” said Kathleen Ridolfi of the Northern California
Innocence Project.  On Monday the Innocent Project released a study
finding hundreds of instances of prosecutorial misconduct by state and
federal attorneys.

 “Prosecutors know [] they can commit misconduct with impunity.” Ridolfi continues.

The
Center for Public Integrity  found more than 2,000
cases of state and local misconduct of prosecutors that resulted in
criminal charges being dismissed, convictions reversed and sentences
reduced.  Nevertheless, there were no successful lawsuits against a
prosecutor involved in any of these cases.

Truth
in Justice organization maintains a listing of some of these cases
where prosecutorial misconduct was
involved.