The Supreme Court has reversed a $14 million jury verdict in favor of John Thompson who served 18 years in prison (14 of them on death row) for crimes that he did not commit. The verdict was based upon prosecutorial misconduct, and indeed, the prosecution admitted that it had failed to turn over exculpatory evidence in violation of the applicable law and the duty imposed upon prosecutors. Because of the narrow window for compensation in such matters, Mr. Thompson was compelled to allege and prove that the prosecutor had failed to properly train his assistants. The Supreme Court, in essence, concluded that the claim could not survive because one violation of the duty to turn-over exculpatory evidence did not meet the standard necessary to establish a failure to train. Thus Mr. Thompson was left without compensation for his 18 years in prison primarily caused by the prosecutor's misconduct. The dissent argued that the standard had been met and cited the repeated failures and repeated misconduct of the office.
But I look at this case and ask: why should a person who has been wrongly convicted, declared innocent, acquitted and exonerated have to prove anything? Shouldn't that be enough to entitle the person to compensation? Why should Mr. Thompson have to prove not only that he was imprisoned for 18 years largely due to the misconduct of the prosecutor, but that somehow that misconduct was the result of some failure to teach the assistants in that office what the law requires! Compensation should be granted automatically in such circumstances by law.
Imagine the horrors of prison life and then add to it the knowledge that you are confined although innocent -- away from your family your friends, your job -- and your compensation when (and if) freed is dependent on being able to prove a lack of training in the prosecutor's office. Every state should have mandatory compensation in all such cases. Some do, but the amount or formula in those that do (including the federal government) is almost laughable when considering what has been done to and experienced by those who have been wrongly convicted and incarcerated.
I have no idea what the proper formula or compensation should be for an innocent person spending a day, a week, a month or a year or years in prison -- but whatever it is, it cannot be enough. We regularly compensate people without suit in so many other instances, how can this horrific injury not be compensated? When a person steps out of prison after being exonerated for a crime that he did not commit, a representative of the state should be at the gate waiting with a check to present to him, rather than make him jump through some unnecessary and difficult legal hoop. If how we treat our prisoners is the measure of a nation, then certainly how we treat those wrongfully imprisoned can be no less of a measure.
Note: In an Op-Ed in Sunday's New York Times Mr. Thompson discusses the failure to punish prosecutors for their misconduct -- a topic for another day.
So, just to be clear: the majority of the Supreme Court agrees that our society is so litigious that prosecuting innocent people is completely out of control, and so a select group of people (those who do the prosecuting) must be protected from this insane amount of prosecution.
I was watching PBS Sunday and caught some sort of British show about a lawyer in Georgian England. It highlights the corruption of that historical legal system. The faults of that time could be mirrored today.
Perhaps if the prosecutors were imprisoned for 18 years they might be willing to all chip in and pay compensation to Mr. Thompson. Oh, excuse me. That would be Sharia law, wouldn't it?
If the court system now cares more about keeping the conveyor belt running efficiently than about justice, then they obviously don't want to compensate the embarrassments that demonstrate the flaw in their system. So, compensation for wrongly convicted defendants is out of the question.
If you are going to send someone to jail, you had better be right.
There must be a deterrent to prosecutorial misconduct. We simply cannot keep saying "It doesn't happen that often."
The U.S. has far too many people in jail. It cannot be because they are all guilty.
I wish for the day where we decide that it is best to let 10 guilty people go free to insure 1 innocent person does not go to jail. Our legal system is a mirror of our society and that mirror is pretty foggy.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/la-ed-connick-20110406,0,194062.story
they did society a favor and locked him up so he wouldn't harm anyone else, I don't have any sympathy for this man
There needs to be not only mandatory compensation laws, but harsher punishments for (proven) prosecutorial/police misconduct . Tack on harsher punishments for false accusations (ideally the sentence that would have been served by the accused) and you could drastically cut the number of wrongful convictions.
I have no problem with punishments for criminals and I support the death penalty (bad liberal I know) in cases where guilt has been ascertained beyond a shadow of a doubt. My concern though, and I've been personally involved with someone who was wrongfully accused, is that even pointing the finger can destroy a life. We need to do our best to prevent it.
You raise a question about justice. A specific question. But, at its heart, the question you raise goes straight to the issue raised by Sen. Gary Hart on this very site: are we a society or merely a collection of unrelated people existing in the same space? In this day and age of Neo-Randism, it would seem that what we have is one segment of people who would wish that all in the world could enjoy the freedoms and benefits that Jefferson called "self-evident." On the other side, we have these nihilistic Neo-Randians who believe that life is only about them and theirs. Get what you can from others and "f-theRest" on the way up. We see this on a daily basis from the grotesque salaries stolen from working people by the Executives at companies whose sole purpose on the planet seems to be for the purpose of generating more grotesque wealth for the wealthiest of the wealthy and "f-theRest." The system we call "democracy" is a mere mirage. It is a system designed by, for, and of the wealthiest of the wealthy. Designed to allow to keep what they have and extract more and more. Politicians, and yes, even judges, are bought and paid for so that this may always remain so. In the face of that, I believe you will find the answer to why we make the innocent continue to suffer long after their guilt has been absolved.
Mr. Thompson and others convicted as the result of prosecutorial misconduct have suffered enough. Our society needs to do right by them.
The biggest issue here to me is the problem that allows something like this to happen. I don't know enough about the specific case to pretend to know if the person was truly innocent or if the actions of the DA's office simply provided reasonable doubt. My wife worked with victim's groups for years and the last thing they wanted to have happen was for evidence to be gathered improperly. Not just because it might lead to convicting the wrong person, but that it could lead to a guilty party being released because evidence was thrown out. Bottom line is that we have to do a better job of educating and a better job of keeping everything above board. We should recognize stupid statistics like conviction rates as what they are, stupid. Does a high conviction rate mean a DA did his job or did he shy away from cases that were hard to prove and/or bend the rules to convict?