Summary Of The Supreme Court Case Of Connick V. Thompson

The American legal system hears many cases relating to liability, but surprisingly, most of these cases concern the prosecutors within their own legal system. In the Supreme Court case Connick v. Thompson, a district attorney’s office denied liability for the extreme misconduct of its prosecutors. The Supreme Court decided that the D.A. office was not liable for the actions of their prosecutors because they did not have a pattern of Brady violations. Contrary to the decision in Connick v. Thompson, the D.A. office should have been held liable for the misconduct of its prosecutors. Brady violations appeared throughout the case, other cases of Brady violations in that D.A. office, and the office’s blatant neglect to properly train its prosecutors.

Thompson committed many Brady violations. Brady violations are based on Brady v. Maryland, in which the court required prosecutors to turn over exculpatory evidence. There was a large lack of stability regarding the main evidence of the case. The victim’s family gave a reward to the person who provided the main evidence of the case in which Thompson was sentenced to the death penalty (Equal Justice Initiative). The prosecutors failed to disclose this information with the defense, and therefore hid a crucial factor of the case. Due to the fact that there was a reward for coming forward with evidence, the person who provided the main evidence of the case could have been providing false information for personal gain. Additionally, an eyewitness gave a description of the perpetrator, and the description given looked nothing like Thompson. The prosecutors also failed to show the interview with this description, successfully hiding the evidence from the defense. Perhaps the most consequential Brady violation was that the prosecutors hid blood samples from the case which did not match the blood type of Thompson. Although Brady vs Maryland requires that the prosecutors turn this evidence over to the defense, they did not (Lithwick). This was an extreme Brady violation and resulted in Thompson serving fourteen years on death

office did not commit Brady violations because there was not a pattern of violations in that office, there were multiple violations in that D.A. office. In the Concurring Opinion, Scalia said that “the question presented for our review is whether a municipality is liable for a single Brady violation by one of its prosecutors” (Scalia). Similarly, Judge Clarence Thomas also claimed that a single Brady violation done by a single prosecutor cannot establish liability in the Opinion of the Court (Thomas). However, there were multiple prosecutors involved in Connick v. Thompson who withheld evidence. Gary Deegan, a junior prosecutor on the case, confessed to withholding evidence by removing bloodwork from the evidence room (Lithwick). The prosecutor that he admitted this to then proceeded to withhold this information for another five years (Lithwick). Likewise, Ruth Bader Ginsburg states that “ no fewer than five prosecutors—the four trial prosecutors and Riehlmann—disregarded [Thompson’s] Brady rights” (Ginsburg). Since multiple prosecutors being involved in the violation of Brady, Scalia’s claim that a single prosecutor committed these violations is false. Additionally, there were multiple cases of the Orleans Parish District Attorney Office withholding evidence. Just ten years before Thompson’s case, Louisiana state courts overturned four other similar cases of withholding evidence in that D.A. Office (Equal Justice Initiative).