document: Man Wrongly Convicted : Are Prosecutors Liable ? When prosecutors violate the law to deprive a person of a fair trial , is vindication enough , or should the prosecutors be held liable for damages ? This week , a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court all but closed the door to such lawsuits . The 5-4 ruling came in the case of a New Orleans man who served 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit . In December of 1984 , Raymond Liuzza Jr. , the son of a prominent New Orleans business executive , was shot to death in front of his home . Police , acting on a tip , picked up two men , Kevin Freeman and John Thompson . Thompson denied knowing anything about the shooting , but Freeman , in exchange for a one-year prison sentence , agreed to testify that he saw Thompson commit the crime . Prosecutors wanted to seek the death penalty , but Thompson had no record of violent felonies . Then , a citizen saw his photo in the newspaper and implicated him in an attempted carjacking - and prosecutors saw a way to solve their problem . John Hollway , who wrote a book about the case , said the solution was to try the carjacking case first . A conviction in the carjacking case would yield additional benefits in the subsequent murder trial , Hollway observes . It would discredit Thompson if he took the stand in his own defense at the murder trial , so he did n't . And the carjacking would be used against him during the punishment phase of the murder trial . It all worked like a charm . Thompson was convicted of both crimes and sentenced to death for murder . An '' `` Oh My God '' '' Moment Several years later , four young lawyers at the silk-stocking firm of Morgan Lewis in Philadelphia took on his case pro bono . But after 10 years and thousands of hours of work , they had lost all their appeals , including one at the U.S. Supreme Court . Two of the lawyers , Michael Banks and Gordon Cooney , flew to Louisiana . '' `` We were literally on our way from telling John that we had failed him as his lawyers and that he was going to die , '' '' Banks says . '' `` And we were on our way to tell his mother and his 17-year-old son that they should start planning for the execution . '' '' Banks was driving while his co-counsel checked their office voicemail and learned some astonishing news : Their investigator had unearthed , in microfiche files , a lab report to prosecutors in the carjacking . A swatch of fabric stained with the carjacker 's blood had been tested and never produced to the defense . '' `` It is an '' `` oh my God '' '' moment , '' '' Banks says . He says that single discovery would unravel both cases . '' `` We still did not have evidence of Thompson 's innocence , but now we knew the DAs had played very , very dirty pool , and we were determined to see if there was other evidence that we could get , '' '' he says . There was plenty . Further testing would show that the carjacker 's blood was Type B ; Thompson 's was Type O. And , it turned out , one of the prosecutors had years earlier made a deathbed confession to a colleague that he had hidden the blood report from the defense . That confession , too , was kept secret . To The Supreme Court All of this would eventually lead to reversal for both convictions , and a new trial on the murder charge . At that trial , yet more evidence would be uncovered and presented to the jury . Previously undisclosed police reports showed witnesses at the crime scene had described the shooter as 6 feet tall with close-cropped hair . Thompson was 5-feet , 8-inches tall with a huge Afro . The description , in fact , fit not Thompson , but Freeman , the man who had made the deal to testify against Thompson . In all , there would be 10 pieces of exculpatory evidence that prosecutors failed to turn over to the defense at the first murder trial . At the second trial , a jury acquitted Thompson after just 35 minutes of deliberation . Thompson then sued New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick and his office for failure to train prosecutors about their obligation to turn over such evidence to the defense . Connick 's office had previously been chastised by the Supreme Court for similar failures . A jury awarded Thompson $ 14 million in damages . But this week , the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that award . Justice Clarence Thomas , writing for the five-justice majority , said there was no proof of a pattern of indifference in the DA 's office and that prosecutors , unlike police , do not need special training in such matters because they learn the rules in law school . Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took the unusual step of reading her dissent from the bench to underscore her view that the '' `` deliberately indifferent attitude '' '' in the DA 's office had created a '' `` tinderbox , '' '' where miscarriages of justice were inevitable . Many saw her dissent as a call to Congress to change the law . '' `` That Is What 's Scary '' '' Thompson says he 's not bitter , saying he ca n't miss money he never had , but he says he is worried about accountability for prosecutors . '' `` I 'm disappointed that from the Supreme Court ruling ... I did n't make things better . I might have made things worser , '' '' he says . '' `` It made them really think they got permission to kill now without being held accountable . That is what 's scary . '' '' Connick , the district attorney , feels vindicated by the high court ruling . '' `` I think that he committed ... a murder , and I think that obviously we thought we had enough evidence to gain a conviction , '' '' he says . '' `` So I was delighted that the Supreme Court ruled in our favor . '' ''
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