Suppressed tortures had been used in empty courtrooms against veterans, in previous decades, in order to benefit special interests groups and cronies and fellow lawyers of elected representatives and judges. The necessary result was intimidation and fraudulent court histories. Habeas corpus hearings were always no more than a joke, and bogus commitments were always the norm.
Thursday, February 09, 2012
[Victims of Court Corruption] Fwd: Fw: When Prosecutors Do Wrong, Who Holds Them Accountable?
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Subject:
Fw: When Prosecutors Do Wrong, Who Holds Them Accountable?
Subject: When Prosecutors Do Wrong, Who Holds Them Accountable?
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February 7, 2012
289 EXONERATED
Dear Ouida,
John Thompson spent 18 years in prison — 14 years of that on death row — for crimes he did not commit. Facing his seventh execution date, a private investigator discovered that scientific evidence of his innocence had been knowingly concealed by the New Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office. Think about that for a moment: While a man’s life hung in the balance, an agency meant to pursue only justice withheld evidence it knew could prove his innocence.
Thompson was eventually exonerated, and like anyone who has been so willfully and egregiously wronged, he sued the prosecutors’ office for what they’d done to him. And he won. A jury awarded him $14 million, one million for each year on death row. When Louisiana appealed, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the spring of 2011, in a controversial 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the prosecutor’s office could not be held liable.
With Connick v. Thompson, the U.S. Supreme Court took away one of the only remaining means for the wrongfully convicted to hold prosecutors accountable for willful misconduct. Although all other professionals, from doctors to airline pilots to clergy, can be held liable for their negligence, the Supreme Court has effectively given district attorney offices legal immunity for the actions of their assistants, even when an office is deliberately indifferent to its responsibility to disclose exculpatory evidence.
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