Is the DA liable?

By Suruchi Mohan

Progressive Media Project

Prosecutors need to be held responsible for their misconduct.

On Oct. 6, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments to decide whether a municipality is liable if a district attorney’s office fails to train its prosecutors to turn over evidence favorable to the defense.

The case is Connick v. Thompson.

John Thompson’s troubles began in December 1984, when businessman Raymond Liuzza Jr. was killed outside his home in New Orleans. Three weeks later Jay LaGarde and his two siblings became victims of an attempted armed robbery outside the New Orleans Superdome.

In January 1985, police arrested Thompson and co-defendant Kevin Freeman, charging them with Liuzza’s murder. On seeing Thompson’s picture in the newspaper, the father of the LaGarde kids called the district attorney’s office, wondering if he might also be responsible for the attempted robbery.

So began the trials — first robbery, then murder — that almost led to Thompson’s execution. Freeman, the real killer, testified against Thompson after cutting a deal with the prosecutors.

Weeks before Thompson’s scheduled execution, one of his attorneys found a report that showed the blood on the pants of one of the LaGarde kids was type B; Thompson’s was type O. After the dismissal of the burglary conviction, Thompson was retried for murder and acquitted. Thompson had spent 18 years behind bars — 14 of them in solitary confinement.

Thompson sued district attorney Harry F. Connick, three prosecutors who had worked on the case, and the district attorney’s office for deliberately withholding the blood report.

In 2007, a jury awarded him $14 million: $1 million for each year he spent in solitary in a 6-by-9 cell. The district attorney’s office appealed; the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict.

The Supreme Court had ruled in Brady v. Maryland in 1963 that prosecutors must provide evidence favorable to the defense.

But hair-splitting in this case ignores the larger issue of the prosecutor’s duty to serve the cause of justice, not just win a conviction.

A former technology journalist, Suruchi Mohan is the author of the novel “Divine Music.” She follows legal issues and volunteers at the Northern California Innocence Project and wrote this for the Progressive Media Project.