A district attorney’s office should be liable for misconduct by its employees
In the Thompson case, attorneys withheld evidence of the defendant’s innocence on charges of robbery and murder. Consequently, he spent 18 years in prison for crimes he did not commit. This case was not a single incident of injustice. More than one piece of exculpatory evidence was withheld during Thompson’s trial. More than one attorney knew about this and failed to act on it. But because of the court majority’s faulty reasoning, the district that prosecuted Thompson is not held liable.
The Supreme Court overturned a jury’s $14 million award to Thompson on the grounds that the district was not deliberately indifferent to the defendant’s rights. They said the district did not fail to provide its employees adequate training in the discovery of exculpatory evidence. The employees did the wrong thing, their reasoning goes, but their bosses can’t be held liable for it. But if the office responsible for putting the case against Thompson is not liable for the harm done to him, who is? Plus, it wasn’t just one rogue employee who did Thompson in. It’s clear that the prosecutors broke the law and caused an innocent man to be convicted and sentenced to death. (Thank God "justice" is not always swift.) Why is that not reason enough to hold the district responsible?
If they’re worried about endless lawsuits against district attorneys, it is hard to see why. How often do prosecutors accuse the wrong person and withhold exculpatory evidence in order to get him convicted? If it happens often, it seems we need a lot more lawsuits. If it doesn’t happen often, then D.A.s would have nothing to fear from a ruling in Thompson’s favor. They would be safe as long as they disclosed all their evidence, including evidence that may indicate innocence. Their job isn’t just to get someone convicted; their job is to get the person who did the crime convicted. Making them disclose what they have is compatible with them doing their jobs.
The majority essentially argued that the district attorney didn’t know what was going on. That he did everything he could have been expected to do; that he had no reason to provide his employees special caution about the disclosure of exculpatory evidence; that there had been no pattern of wrongdoing that would have alerted him to the problem. But if this is the standard by which a district attorney gets off the hook when his employees knowingly convict an innocent person, the standard needs to change. If the boss doesn’t know what his employees are doing, isn’t that negligent? Even if he does the best he can, is he not still responsible for wrongful actions taken by those in his charge?
The court was wrong to take away Thompson’s award. $14 million is the least society can do to repair the damage of an innocent person's 18 years in prison.
Read the atrocious opinions of Justices Thomas and Scalia for yourself, as well as Justice Ginsberg’s devastating dissent:
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