It was a bad sign at oral argument in Connick v. Thompson last October that the plight of John Thompson was never mentioned. In his opening remarks, his attorney tried to refer to his client. But the justices weren't having any of it.
Not one of the nine made a specific reference to Thompson, who spent 18 years in Louisiana's Angola prison -- one of the most notorious prisons in the country. Or that 14 of those years were spent on death row -- in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.
Or that Thompson was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, railroaded by a prosecutor's office that withheld evidence that would have proved his innocence. Nor did they mention that Thompson discovered information about the prosecutor's misconduct only four weeks before his execution date.
And so perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising that the court ruled against Thompson this week, deciding that Thompson could not sue the New Orleans district attorney's office for failing to train its prosecutors on their duty set out in the Supreme Court's 1963 decision in Brady v. Maryland to provide exculpatory evidence in their control that is in a criminal defendant's favor.
After Thompson discovered that the prosecutors in his case had failed to disclose blood evidence that would have demonstrated that he did not murder a prominent New Orleans businessman, he spent another four years getting a new trial. When he finally did obtain a new trial, the jury took only 35 minutes to exonerate him."
Where is the justice in this? Let me know what you think.
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