Prosecutor Not Liable For Puttin Man on Death Row

[Brown]

A couple of years ago, there was a major case pending before the US Supreme Court dealing with liability for prosecutorial misconduct. There are too many differences between the Thompson case and the older case to go into, but there were some facial similarities. The case was briefed and even orally argued to the Court. Read the oral argument here.

The misconduct by the prosecutor was of a different kind (use of fabricated incriminating evidence rather than concealing legitimate exculpatory evidence). Some of the remarks from the justices (including some who would later rule against Thompson) seemed to show concern that blatant prosecutorial misconduct would pass without any hope of redress, although they also expressed concern about how that conduct could be addressed under civil rights laws.

The case was never decided.

The case was (as I understand) settled before the decision came out. This is rare. Typically, when a case is settled, it is reasonable to expect that the plaintiff got some sort of payment and that prosecutors were worried about the prospect of a Supreme Court decision that might set an undesirable precedent.

Settling the case meant that there no longer was any case or controversy for the Court to decide. So there was no decision.

 

[Travis]

I can see why they wouldn't want it to be easy to sue prosecutors. You want them to be able to make their decisions to prosecute without worrying about such things. But when you have prosecutors fabricating evidence or pressing charges against someone they think is innocent for political reasons (which was my brother's case) you think you should have some sort of redress.

 

[ponderingturtle]

As Travis and his family discovered, prosecutors have immunity from civil claims based on their actions in representing the state. There are some good policy reasons for that, though not everyone finds them persuasive.

The plaintiff here tried to sue for malicious prosecution and intentional infliction of emotional distress, but those claims were tossed before trial on immunity grounds.

Criminal proceedings are a different issue; I'm not sure to what extent immunity would apply there. Professional disciplinary actions are also a different story. Deegan, the undisputed "bad guy" prosecutor (the one who clearly knew of the report's existence), confessed to another prosecutor shortly before his death. That prosecutor sat on the information for years, and was disciplined by the state bar for his failure to come forward.

So basically no one is ever liable for prosecutorial misconduct then right?

 

[Dunstan]

So basically no one is ever liable for prosecutorial misconduct then right?

That's probably too broad a statement (as was my earlier one).

Even under federal civil rights law, it depends on the misconduct. Here's a blog post discussing a distinction in the case law between "advocative conduct" (things like filing charges, presenting evidence to a grand jury or trial court), which gets absolute immunity, and other conduct (investigating, holding press conferences) which gets only qualified immunity. Qualified immunity, as the name suggests, can be overcome -- it's somewhat complicated, but essentially if a government official does something that was clearly against established constitutional rights, there's no immunity, but immunity would apply if it was an "unsettled" area of law. (Sensibly enough, government officials shouldn't be held liable for failing to predict how a court would rule on an unsettled legal issue.)

The blog post cited above mentions some cases where prosecutors have been held liable for things like committing perjury, demanding bribes, etc.

There's also state law, and while I suspect most if not all states follow some form of prosecutorial immunity, I can't say for sure -- the details may vary.

And of course, I'm assuming you're just talking about civil liability. Criminal sanctions, and professional ones like disbarment are still possible, along with being fired.