Connick v. Thompson

Supreme Court of the United States
563 U.S. (2011)

ELI5:

Rule of Law:

Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a district attorney's office cannot be held liable for failure to train its prosecutors based on a single constitutional violation under Brady v. Maryland. A pattern of similar constitutional violations is ordinarily necessary to establish the deliberate indifference required for municipal liability.

Facts:

In early 1985, John Thompson was charged with the murder of Raymond Liuzza, Jr. in New Orleans.
Following publicity from the murder charge, victims of a separate armed robbery identified Thompson as their attacker.
During the robbery investigation, a crime scene technician collected a fabric swatch stained with the robber's blood from a victim's clothing.
Two days before Thompson's armed robbery trial, prosecutors received a crime lab report stating the perpetrator's blood was type B.
The prosecutors did not disclose this lab report to Thompson's defense counsel. It was later determined that Thompson's blood type is O.
Thompson was convicted of armed robbery. Because of this conviction, he chose not to testify in his own defense at his subsequent murder trial.
Thompson was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, spending 18 years in prison, 14 of which were on death row.
One month before his scheduled execution, a defense investigator discovered the undisclosed crime lab report, which ultimately led to the exoneration of Thompson for both crimes.

Procedural Posture:

After his exoneration, John Thompson filed a civil action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana against District Attorney Harry Connick and his office.
The case proceeded to a jury trial on the theory that Connick had failed to adequately train his prosecutors about their constitutional obligations under Brady v. Maryland.
The jury found for Thompson, concluding that the office's failure to train amounted to deliberate indifference and caused the constitutional violation. It awarded Thompson $14 million in damages.
Connick filed a post-verdict motion for judgment as a matter of law, arguing Thompson failed to prove a pattern of similar violations necessary for deliberate indifference. The District Court denied the motion.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the District Court's judgment.
The Fifth Circuit then reheard the case en banc, which vacated the panel's opinion. The en banc court split evenly (9-9), which had the effect of affirming the District Court's judgment in favor of Thompson.
The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the decision of the Fifth Circuit.

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Issue:

Does a single instance of a prosecutor failing to disclose exculpatory evidence under Brady v. Maryland demonstrate that a district attorney's office was deliberately indifferent in failing to train its prosecutors, thus making the office liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983?

Opinions:

Majority - Justice Thomas

No. A district attorney's office may not be held liable under § 1983 for failure to train based on a single Brady violation. To establish liability, a plaintiff must prove that the municipality was 'deliberately indifferent' to the rights of individuals, which ordinarily requires showing a pattern of similar constitutional violations. The 'single-incident' liability hypothesized in Canton v. Harris applies only in a narrow range of circumstances where the need for training is 'patently obvious,' such as training armed police on the constitutional limits of deadly force. Unlike police recruits, prosecutors are attorneys who are trained in the law, equipped to interpret legal principles, and bound by unique ethical obligations, including the duty to disclose exculpatory evidence. A district attorney is entitled to rely on their professional training and ethical duties, and the failure to provide additional, specific in-house Brady training does not present a 'highly predictable' risk of constitutional violations. Holding the office liable for a single violation would effectively create a system of respondeat superior liability, which is forbidden under § 1983.

Dissenting - Justice Ginsburg

Yes. The evidence established persistent, deliberately indifferent conduct for which the District Attorney's Office bears responsibility under § 1983. The violation in Thompson's case was not an isolated incident but the result of a pervasive culture of inattention to Brady obligations, evidenced by multiple nondisclosures in Thompson's trials and a fundamental misunderstanding of Brady by the district attorney and his senior staff. The office provided no meaningful training and its policy manual was inaccurate and incomplete. The need to train prosecutors on their life-or-death Brady obligations is as 'obvious' as the need to train police on the use of deadly force, placing this case squarely within the single-incident liability framework of Canton. The majority's reliance on law school and bar exams is misplaced, as they do not ensure competency in specific prosecutorial duties, and the office itself abdicated its responsibility to provide that critical on-the-job training.

Concurring - Justice Scalia

No. This case does not warrant municipal liability. The Thompson trial team's withholding of evidence was almost certainly not caused by a failure to train, but by the willful, bad-faith misconduct of a single 'miscreant prosecutor' who intentionally suppressed evidence. Such deliberate misconduct cannot be cured by training. Furthermore, it is questionable whether a Brady violation even occurred (aside from the prosecutor's intentional act), as the prosecutors did not know Thompson's blood type and thus did not know the lab report was exculpatory. Under Arizona v. Youngblood, the good-faith failure to preserve or disclose 'potentially useful evidence' is not a due process violation. Therefore, Connick could not have been on notice of a need to train prosecutors on a constitutional duty that had not yet been clearly established.

Analysis:

This decision significantly narrows the path to holding municipalities liable for the misconduct of their prosecutors under a 'failure to train' theory. By emphasizing that a pattern of similar violations is 'ordinarily necessary,' the Court makes it exceptionally difficult for plaintiffs to succeed on a single-incident liability claim. The ruling creates a high bar for accountability, distinguishing legally-trained professionals from other government employees and allowing supervisors to rely on their subordinates' professional background and ethical codes as a defense against claims of deliberate indifference. Consequently, future plaintiffs will likely need to conduct extensive discovery to uncover a history of similar misconduct to have a viable § 1983 claim against a prosecutor's office.

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