Supreme Court Refuses to See Pattern of Abuse
The Supreme Court ruled in another case of prosecutor misconduct, failing to see the patterns of abuse against defendants.

December 11, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Supreme Court Refuses to See Pattern of Abuse

A single violation does not a pattern make, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a case of prosecutor misconduct.

In a case out of Louisiana, the court found that the New Orleans District Attorney's office was not liable to John Thompson, who spent years on death row because a prosecutor failed to turn over lab results that might have exonerated Thompson.

Thompson sued, claiming a pattern of misconduct by the prosecutor's office was a violation under Brady vs. Maryland, making the office liable for violating his due process rights, which resulted in his erroneous conviction on an armed robbery charge. Because of his conviction on the armed robbery, Thompson chose not to testify at his later murdertrial and was ultimately also convicted of murder.

In the trial of Thompson's lawsuit, the district court found that Thompson didn't need to prove a pattern of misconduct if the behavior was obvious based on the facts. An appellate court narrowly upheld that ruling.

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 split decision in the Thompson case, ruled that the plaintiff does have to show a pattern of misconduct in order to win a civil rights case against a prosecutor's office. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion. In this case, Thompson showed that only one prosecutor withheld a single bit of evidence. This did not amount to a pattern, said Thomas. The court's four other conservative members joined Thomas' opinion: Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissent in which she argued that prosecutors in Thompson's case did display a pattern of misconduct because they knew about the lab report and had failed to bring it up on multiple occasions when they should have. Ginsburg argued that the subversion of the due process requirement outlined in the Brady case was met in Thompson's lawsuit. Justices Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Sonya Sotomayor joined Ginsburg's dissent.

Press Release Contact Information:

FL Web Advantage