Connick v. Thompson: U.S. Supreme Court Allows Prosecutors to Hide Evidence Favorable to the Accused without Consequence
By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
John Thompson spent over 18 years in a Louisiana prison, 14 isolated on death role, after a prosecution described as fundamentally unfair by prosecutorial design.
In Thompson’s struggle for justice, prosecutors intentionally withheld favorable evidence, which indicated he was innocent, prior to trial, during trial and throughout the years he spent in prison. The Supreme Court has now held this was not a civil rights violation.
Our criminal justice system, including its court proceedings, should be an adversarial process in which the “search for truth” entails vigorous, but ethical, advocacy, with the “evidence” put to every possible challenge. But, the truth is sometimes like that proverbial needle in the haystack: it’s hard to find.
Both sides in a criminal case, the prosecution and the defense, start at the same point: the haystack. The judge sits on a bench nearby to make sure that the rule of law is followed and that neither side has an illegal or constitutionally prohibited advantage. But sometimes, the judges are cut from a pro-prosecution cloth; these judges tend to forget they are put in place to ensure that the process is fair and that the law is followed, regardless of the outcome of the case. Whether intentionally or not, these judges tend to allow the prosecution to lie and cheat, often telling frustrated defense lawyers to “take it up on appeal.”
We don’t know why some prosecutors lie and cheat, especially considering, in a majority of the cases, they have a factual and procedural advantage throughout the process. We suspect it’s rooted in a desire to “make the bad guy pay” while simultaneously building a career resume with “wins.” We all saw the kids at the playground who lied and cheated to get the upper-hand; they had to win, to be first, and to stand out as the best, no matter the means.
Unfortunately, some of these rogue prosecutors come by cheating quite naturally and are good at it; they find rules, ethics, and codes of professional behavior binding—a restriction of their self-anointed role of “convicting at any costs.” We have encountered plenty in the past and are quite confident we will encounter even more in the future. The reason we can be so sure about this is because our U.S. Supreme Court recently gave “rogue prosecutors” a license to lie and cheat with impunity.
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