Connick v. Thompson
2011 U.S. LEXIS 2594, 563 U.S. 51, 179 L. Ed. 2d 417 (2011)
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Rule of Law:
To establish municipal liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for a failure to train prosecutors, a plaintiff must show that the failure amounted to deliberate indifference, which ordinarily requires proving a pattern of similar constitutional violations, as a single violation is insufficient to place a policymaker on notice of a training deficiency.
Facts:
- In early 1985, John Thompson was charged with the murder of Raymond Liuzza.
- Publicity from the murder charge led victims of an unrelated armed robbery to identify Thompson as their attacker, and he was subsequently charged with that crime.
- During the robbery investigation, a swatch of fabric stained with the robber's blood was collected from a victim's pants.
- Two days before Thompson's armed robbery trial, Assistant District Attorney Bruce Whittaker received a crime lab report stating the perpetrator's blood was type B. Thompson's blood type is O.
- Prosecutors in the office of District Attorney Harry Connick did not disclose the crime lab report to Thompson's defense counsel.
- Thompson was convicted of the attempted armed robbery.
- Because of the armed robbery conviction, Thompson 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 before the undisclosed evidence was discovered by his investigator.
Procedural Posture:
- John Thompson was convicted of attempted armed robbery and first-degree murder in Louisiana state trial courts.
- After 18 years in prison, Thompson's investigator discovered exculpatory evidence that prosecutors had withheld.
- A Louisiana state court vacated the armed robbery conviction.
- The Louisiana Court of Appeal reversed the murder conviction.
- Upon retrial for murder, a jury found Thompson not guilty.
- Thompson filed a lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against District Attorney Harry Connick and his office in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
- A jury found the office liable for a deliberately indifferent failure to train and awarded Thompson $14 million in damages.
- Connick, as petitioner, appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where a three-judge panel affirmed the verdict.
- The Fifth Circuit, sitting en banc, granted a rehearing and ultimately affirmed the district court's judgment by an evenly divided vote.
- The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the case.
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Issue:
Does a district attorney's office's failure to train its prosecutors on their Brady disclosure obligations amount to 'deliberate indifference' sufficient for municipal liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 when the failure results in a single Brady violation?
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 municipal liability for failure to train, a plaintiff must prove 'deliberate indifference,' a stringent standard that requires showing a municipal actor disregarded a known or obvious consequence of their action. A pattern of similar constitutional violations is ordinarily necessary to put a policymaker on notice of a training deficiency. The 'single-incident' liability hypothesized in Canton v. Harris does not apply here because attorneys are highly trained professionals, equipped with the tools to interpret law and bound by ethical obligations, unlike the hypothetical untrained police officers in Canton. A district attorney is entitled to rely on prosecutors' professional training and ethics unless a pattern of violations provides a specific reason to believe that training is insufficient. The four prior Brady reversals in Connick's office were not similar enough to the violation at issue to establish the required notice.
Dissenting - Justice Ginsburg
Yes. The evidence was sufficient for a jury to find that the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office was deliberately indifferent to an obvious need for Brady training. The misconduct against Thompson was not a single, isolated incident but involved multiple prosecutors suppressing various pieces of exculpatory evidence across two trials. Evidence presented at the § 1983 trial showed that District Attorney Connick and his senior staff fundamentally misunderstood their Brady obligations, the office provided no meaningful training or monitoring for Brady compliance, and the office's written policies were inaccurate and incomplete. Given that prosecutors constantly face Brady decisions, the need for training was 'so obvious' and the inadequacy of training was 'so likely' to result in constitutional violations that the failure to train constituted deliberate indifference under the framework established in Canton.
Concurring - Justice Scalia
No. The theory of liability advanced by Thompson, which suggests that mistakes are inevitable over many trials, would effectively create a system of respondeat superior liability forbidden by Monell. The withholding of evidence was likely caused by a single miscreant prosecutor, Gerry Deegan, acting in bad faith, which cannot be attributed to a failure of training. Furthermore, there was likely no Brady violation by the other prosecutors because, without knowing Thompson's blood type, the lab report was not known to be exculpatory. Therefore, Connick could not have been deliberately indifferent for failing to train his staff on a nuanced legal point that the Supreme Court itself had not clearly established.
Analysis:
This decision significantly narrows the scope of municipal liability for failure to train highly educated professionals like prosecutors. By emphasizing that a 'pattern of similar violations' is the ordinary prerequisite for proving deliberate indifference, the Court makes it exceedingly difficult for plaintiffs to succeed on a 'single-incident' theory of liability in this context. The ruling reinforces judicial deference to the professional judgment and training of attorneys, effectively insulating district attorneys' offices from § 1983 liability absent a clear history of misconduct. It heightens the burden for plaintiffs who suffer constitutional violations at the hands of prosecutors, requiring them to uncover and prove a systemic pattern rather than focusing on the single, albeit catastrophic, violation in their own case.
