Connick v. Thompson

• Decision Date: 29 March 2011
• Docket Number: No. 09–571.,09–571.
• Parties: Harry F. CONNICK, District Attorney, et al., Petitioners, v. John THOMPSON.
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

563 U.S. 51

131 S.Ct. 1350

179 L.Ed.2d 417

Harry F. CONNICK, District Attorney, et al., Petitioners,

v.John THOMPSON.

No. 09–571.

Supreme Court of the United States

Argued Oct. 6, 2010.

Decided March 29, 2011.

Stuart K. Duncan, Baton Rouge, LA, for Petitioners.

Gordon Cooney, Jr., Philadelphia, PA, for Respondent.

James D. "Buddy" Caldwell, Louisiana Attorney General, S. Kyle Duncan, Ross W. Bergethon, Robert Abendroth, Assistant Attorneys General, Louisiana Department of Justice, Baton Rouge, LA, Leon A. Cannizzaro, Jr., Orleans Parish District Attorney, Graymond F. Martin, First Assistant District Attorney, Donna R. Andrieu, New Orleans, LA, for Petitioners.

R. Ted Cruz, Allyson N. Ho, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Houston, Texas, Michael L. Banks, J. Gordon Cooney, Jr., Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for Respondent.

Justice THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office now concedes that, in prosecuting respondent John Thompson for attempted armed robbery, prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that should have been turned over to the defense under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). Thompson was convicted. Because of that conviction Thompson elected not to testify in his own defense in his later trial for murder, and he was again convicted. Thompson spent 18 years in prison, including 14 years on death row. One month before Thompson's scheduled execution, his investigator discovered the undisclosed evidence from his armed robbery trial. The reviewing court determined that the evidence was exculpatory, and both of Thompson's convictions were vacated.

After his release from prison, Thompson sued petitioner Harry Connick, in his official capacity as the Orleans Parish District Attorney, for damages under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Thompson alleged that Connick had failed to train his prosecutors adequately about their duty to produce exculpatory evidence and that the lack of training had caused the nondisclosure in Thompson's robbery case. The jury awarded Thompson $14 million, and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed by an evenly divided en banc court. We granted certiorari to decide whether a district attorney's office may be held liable under § 1983 for failure to train based on a single Brady violation. We hold that it cannot.

I

A

In early 1985, John Thompson was charged with the murder of Raymond T. Liuzza, Jr. in New Orleans. Publicity following the murder charge led the victims of an unrelated armed robbery to identify Thompson as their attacker. The district attorney charged Thompson with attempted armed robbery.

As part of the robbery investigation, a crime scene technician took from one of the victims' pants a swatch of fabric stained with the robber's blood. Approximately one week before Thompson's armed robbery trial, the swatch was sent to the crime laboratory. Two days before the trial, assistant district attorney Bruce Whittaker received the crime lab's report, which stated that the perpetrator had blood type B. There is no evidence that the prosecutors ever had Thompson's blood tested or that they knew what his blood type was. Whittaker claimed he placed the report on assistant district attorney James Williams' desk, but Williams denied seeing it. The report was never disclosed to Thompson's counsel.

Williams tried the armed robbery case with assistant district attorney Gerry Deegan. On the first day of trial, Deegan checked all of the physical evidence in the case out of the police property room, including the blood-stained swatch. Deegan then checked all of the evidence but the swatch into the courthouse property room. The prosecutors did not mention the swatch or the crime lab report at trial, and the jury convicted Thompson of attempted armed robbery.

A few weeks later, Williams and special prosecutor Eric Dubelier tried Thompson for the Liuzza murder. Because of the armed robbery conviction, Thompson chose not to testify in his own defense. He was convicted and sentenced to death. State v. Thompson, 516 So.2d 349 (La.1987). In the 14 years following Thompson's murder conviction, state and federal courts reviewed and denied his challenges to the conviction and sentence. See State ex rel. Thompson v. Cain, 95–2463 (La.4/25/96), 672 So.2d 906; Thompson v. Cain, 161 F.3d 802 (C.A.5 1998). The State scheduled Thompson's execution for May 20, 1999.

In late April 1999, Thompson's private investigator discovered the crime lab report from the armed robbery investigation in the files of the New Orleans Police Crime Laboratory. Thompson was tested and found to have blood type O, proving that the blood on the swatch was not his. Thompson's attorneys presented this evidence to the district attorney's office, which, in turn, moved to stay the execution and vacate Thompson's armed robbery conviction.¹ The Louisiana Court of Appeals then reversed Thompson's murder conviction, concluding that the armed robbery conviction unconstitutionally deprived Thompson of his right to testify in his own defense at the murder trial. State v. Thompson, 2002–0361 (La.App.7/17/02), 825 So.2d 552. In 2003, the district attorney's office retried Thompson for Liuzza's murder.² The jury found him not guilty.

B

Thompson then brought this action against the district attorney's office, Connick, Williams, and others, alleging that their conduct caused him to be wrongfully convicted, incarcerated for 18 years, and nearly executed. The only claim that proceeded to trial was Thompson's claim under § 1983 that the district attorney's office had violated Brady by failing to disclose the crime lab report in his armed robbery trial. See Brady, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215. Thompson alleged liability under two theories: (1) the Brady violation was caused by an unconstitutional policy of the district attorney's office; and (2) the violation was caused by Connick's deliberate indifference to an obvious need to train the prosecutors in his office in order to avoid such constitutional violations.

Before trial, Connick conceded that the failure to produce the crime lab report constituted a Brady violation.³ See Record EX608, EX880. Accordingly, the District Court instructed the jury that the "only issue" was whether the nondisclosure was caused by either a policy, practice, or custom of the district attorney's office or a deliberately indifferent failure to train the office's prosecutors. Record 1615.

Although no prosecutor remembered any specific training session regarding Brady prior to 1985, it was undisputed at trial that the prosecutors were familiar with the general Brady requirement that the State disclose to the defense evidence in its possession that is favorable to the accused. Prosecutors testified that office policy was to turn crime lab reports and other scientific evidence over to the defense. They also testified that, after the discovery of the undisclosed crime lab report in 1999, prosecutors disagreed about whether it had to be disclosed under Brady absent knowledge of Thompson's blood type.

The jury rejected Thompson's claim that an unconstitutional office policy caused the Brady violation, but found the district attorney's office liable for failing to train the prosecutors. The jury awarded Thompson $14 million in damages, and the District Court added more than $1 million in attorney's fees and costs.

After the verdict, Connick renewed his objection—which he had raised on summary judgment—that he could not have been deliberately indifferent to an obvious need for more or different Brady training because there was no evidence that he was aware of a pattern of similar Brady violations. The District Court rejected this argument for the reasons that it had given in the summary judgment order. In that order, the court had concluded that a pattern of violations is not necessary to prove deliberate indifference when the need for training is "so obvious." No. Civ. A. 03–2045 (ED La., Nov. 15, 2005), App. to Pet. for Cert. 141a, 2005 WL 3541035, *13. Relying on Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378, 109 S.Ct. 1197, 103 L.Ed.2d 412 (1989), the court had held that Thompson could demonstrate deliberate indifference by proving that "the DA's office knew to a moral certainty that assistan[t] [district attorneys] would acquire Brady material, that without training it is not always obvious what Brady requires, and that withholding Brady material will virtually always lead to a substantial violation of constitutional rights."⁴ App. to Pet. for Cert. 141a, 2005 WL 3541035, *13.

A panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The panel acknowledged that Thompson did not present evidence of a pattern of similar Brady violations, 553 F.3d 836, 851 (2008), but held that Thompson did not need to prove a pattern, id., at 854. According to the panel, Thompson demonstrated that Connick was on notice of an obvious need for Brady training by presenting evidence "that attorneys, often fresh out of law school, would undoubtedly be required to confront Brady issues while at the DA's Office, that erroneous decisions regarding Brady evidence would result in serious constitutional violations, that resolution of Brady issues was often unclear, and that training in Brady would have been helpful." 553 F.3d, at 854.

The Court of Appeals sitting en banc vacated the panel opinion, granted rehearing, and divided evenly, thereby affirming the District Court. 578 F.3d 293 (C.A.5 2009)(per curiam) . In four opinions, the divided en banc court disputed whether Thompson could establish municipal liability for failure to train the prosecutors based on the single Brady violation without proving a prior pattern of similar violations, and, if so, what evidence would make that showing. We granted certiorari. 559 U.S. ––––, 130 S.Ct. 1880, 176 L.Ed.2d 399 (2010).

II

The Brady violation conceded in this case occurred when one or more of the four...