Prosecutors get broad shield against lawsuits

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lawsuit from a Los Angeles man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and gave district attorneys a broad shield against being sued even if their management mistakes send an innocent person to prison.

Thomas Goldstein, an ex-Marine convicted of a 1979 shooting in Long Beach, Calif., spent 24 years in prison largely on the word of a heroin addict who worked as a jailhouse informer for police and prosecutors. Ed Fink, the informer, lied on the witness stand when he denied receiving a benefit for testifying for the police, a judge found.

Goldstein was freed in 2004, and he sued former Los Angeles District Attorney John Van de Kamp and top deputy Curt Livesay, contending they allowed prosecutors to regularly use jailhouse informers and did not take steps to make sure they were telling the truth. In Goldstein’s case, the trial prosecutor did not know Fink was lying because other prosecutors in the county D.A.’s office did not share information.

In Monday’s decision, the Supreme Court mostly set aside the facts of Goldstein’s case and focused on the potential harm of allowing top prosecutors to be sued. District attorneys who are managing teams of prosecutors should not face the fear they might be sued years later by resentful crime suspects, the justices said.

In the past, the court had said trial prosecutors are entitled to absolute immunity for their courtroom work. In Monday’s ruling, the court extended that shield to cover district attorneys and other chief prosecutors for any actions that involve prosecutions and trials.

Last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said, however, that top prosecutors can be sued for “administrative” failures. Its decision rejected Van de Kamp’s claim of immunity and cleared Goldstein’s suit to proceed.

But the Supreme Court rejected the distinction between administrative and management tasks Monday and said management of trial-related information is a prosecution function. “We conclude that a prosecutor’s absolute immunity extends to all these claims” about tracking jailhouse informants because they are “directly connected with the conduct of a trial,” Justice Stephen G. Breyer said.

And in a second decision Monday, the court said police can stop and frisk a passenger in a stopped car, even if there is no reason to suspect the passenger has done anything wrong.

The ruling in favor of district attorneys is consistent with the Supreme Court’s trend of limiting lawsuits, especially against the government.

Goldstein, 60, said he has a separate suit pending in federal court against the city of Long Beach and four police detectives.