USSCT will hear prosecutorial immunity case
The United States Supreme Court will decide Goldstein v. Van de Kamp, et. al., to determine whether top officials in a prosecutor's office can be sued for damages for failing to supervise/ failing to put into place policies to ensure that Brady materials are provided to defense counsel.
Thomas Lee Goldstein spent 24 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted for a murder in Long Beach, California. Goldstein was convicted in large part based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant who also testified that he received no benefits in exchange for his testimony and that he had never received benefits in exchange for work done for law enforcement.
The Defense was not told that the informant had in fact been working as an informant for years and had received reduced sentences more than once. In 2004, after the information finally came to light, Goldstein was released after the 9th Circuit affirmed his habeas petition.
Among others, Goldstein sued the Los Angeles County District Attorney and his Chief Deputy, the head honchos at the DA's office when Goldstein was prosecuted, in a federal section 1983 action, for failing to develop policies and procedures and failing to train the subordinate district attorneys in the office as to the requirements of Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States. The District Attorney claimed that he was entitled to absolute immunity from liability, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.
The lawsuit was a creative way to get at the persons responsible for Goldstein's conviction. He could not sue the assistant district attorneys that prosecuted him, because they were shielded by absolute immunity. Absolute immunity is an absolute bar to 1983 liability for actions taken that are "intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process," Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 430, 96 S.Ct. 984, 47 L.Ed.2d 128 (1976), and "occur[s] in the course of his [or her] role as an advocate for the State," Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 261, 113 S.Ct. 2606, 125 L.Ed.2d 209 (1993).
Qualified immunity, on the other hand, is a bar to 1983 liability only for conduct that does not violate a constitutional right, or conduct that violates a constitutional right that was not clearly established. If a prosecutor is performing only administrative functions, or investigative functions (acting as a detective or cop), they are only entitled to qualified immunity.
The Supreme Court has held that prosecutors have absolute immunity from Section 1983 liability based on decisions to prosecute, knowingly suborning perjury, and for hiding exculpatory evidence. However, because the failure to institute policies to ensure compliance with Brady was not related to any specific case, but rather an administrative failure, the 9th Circuit held that the prosecutors in Goldstein have only qualified immunity rather than absolute immunity. The lawsuit is based on administrative conduct, rather than prosecutorial.
