WASHINGTON — A New Orleans man who was sent to death row for a murder he did not commit cannot sue the local prosecutor's office over the misconduct that helped put him there, a divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.


By Jennifer S. Altman for USA TODAY
John Thompson was on death row for more than a decade before being cleared on DNA evidence. Here he poses in his lawyers offices in New York on sept. 30, 2010.
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By Jennifer S. Altman for USA TODAY
John Thompson was on death row for more than a decade before being cleared on DNA evidence. Here he poses in his lawyers offices in New York on sept. 30, 2010.
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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 prosecutors in charge of his trial had deliberately concealed evidence — a blood sample taken from the scene of the carjacking — that could have proved his innocence. Prosecutors have a constitutional duty to disclose such evidence.
By a 5-4 margin on Tuesday, the justices overturned a $14 million verdict Thompson won against former New Orleans district attorney Harry Connick Sr. — father of singer Harry Connick Jr. — for poor training of prosecutors that Thompson's lawyers claimed was to blame for the violations.
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The Supreme Court ruled 35 years ago that individual prosecutors cannot be sued for constitutional violations in the courtroom. Tuesday's ruling further limits the circumstances under which people who say they were wronged by prosecutorial misconduct can bring their claims to court.
The violations in Thompson's case were similar to problems documented by a USA TODAY investigation last year. The newspaper found 201 cases since 1997 in which U.S. judges determined that federal prosecutors had violated laws or ethics rules.
Writing for the court's majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that the prosecutors who handled Thompson's case "failed to carry out" their responsibility to "see that justice is done." But he said that Thompson could not sue the DA's office without evidence of a series of similar violations in other cases, which would have put officials on notice of the need for additional training.
Thomas was joined by Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy. Justice Antonin Scalia also joined the majority but wrote a separate opinion questioning whether prosecutors in Thompson's case actually violated their constitutional duties, even though the DA's office conceded that they did.
The four liberal justices —Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor— dissented.
Ginsburg wrote that Thompson should be able to sue "for the gross, deliberately indifferent, and long-continuing violation of his fair trial right."
Taking the rare step of reading portions of her dissenting opinion from the bench, Ginsburg emphasized the injustice Thompson faced and the responsibility Connick bears.
She noted that for decades prosecutors have been obligated to turn over evidence that might exonerate a defendant and said, "That obligation was dishonored in this case. Consequently, John Thompson spent 14 years isolated on death row before the truth came to light: He was innocent of the charge of attempted armed robbery, and his subsequent murder trial, by prosecutorial design, was fundamentally unfair."
Ginsburg, whose outrage at the majority decision was palpable, pointed specifically to Connick's role: "Ample evidence presented at the civil rights trial demonstrated that Connick's deliberately indifferent attitude created a tinderbox in which Brady violations were nigh inevitable," she said, referring to a 1963 case, Brady v. Maryland, that requires prosecutors to inform defendants of evidence that might indicate their innocence.
"Training remains critical," Ginsburg said, "and Connick himself should have been the principal insurer of that training."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/2011-03-29-supreme-court-death-row-case_N.htm