Supreme Court to Weigh Immunity for Supervising Prosecutors
Today the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether supervising prosecutors can be sued for management errors that result in wrongful convictions, SCOTUSblog reports.
The suit before the court claims the Los Angeles district attorney failed to set up a system to make prosecutors aware of the reliability of jailhouse informants and the benefits they had been promised, the Los Angeles Times reports. The plaintiff, Thomas Lee Goldstein, served 24 years in prison for a shotgun murder before an witness recanted testimony and questions surfaced about testimony by a jailhouse informant who claimed Goldstein confessed to him.
Goldstein says the informant lied in court when he said he did not receive any promises of special treatment in exchange for his testimony. The suit names John Van de Kamp, who was the district attorney of Los Angeles at the time. He later served as California attorney general.
The cert petition (PDF) points out that line prosecutors have immunity for decisions made in preparation for trial, including decisions about whether to disclose informant information. “May a plaintiff circumvent that immunity by suing one or more supervising prosecutors for purportedly improperly training, supervising, or setting policy with regard to the disclosure of such informant information for all cases prosecuted by his or her agency?” the petition asks.
The L.A. Times story says the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “set off alarms” when it allowed the lawsuit against Van de Kamp last year.
