Las Vegas Sun: Liars, Lazy, Liars Or Racist?

The Las Vegas Sun loves to put out liberal editorials. Most editorials are laughable and they editorials look like they were written by a 3 year old. However, today, the Sun put out a editorial in which the Sun either out and out lied, was very lazy or stupid or written because of racism. Today, the Las Vegas Sun put out an editorial about how a man was convicted in a robbery/murder case but the prosecutors hid evidence from the defense attorney's and his conviction was overturned. The man, John Thompson, then sued the New Orleans DA for wrongful conviction and won a $14 million award. But Sun's editorial as written, has nothing to do with the issues in the case. From the Sun: Searching through microfiche stored in a crime lab, she found a report that analyzed blood found in the robbery case that came from either the robber or the victim. The blood didn’t match either Thompson or the victim. Thompson’s attorneys were stunned. During the trial and the appeals, prosecutors denied the existence of the report. And that wasn’t all prosecutors hadn’t disclosed. They withheld much more — evidence, reports and the names of witnesses — that would have undercut their case. As a result, a judge threw out the convictions. Prosecutors tried Thompson again for murder, but a jury — seeing all the evidence — quickly acquitted him. After being released, Thompson sued the district attorney in federal court for violating his rights by withholding evidence. The law allows such lawsuits if a prosecutor’s office shows a pattern of failing to turn over evidence. A federal jury awarded Thompson $14 million, which the district attorney’s office, which was liable to pay, appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 decision last month, the Supreme Court overturned the jury verdict and minimized the case. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/apr/16/supreme-injustice/ What the prosecutors behavior was outrageous and wrong in this case, however, in almost every case of DA misconduct, the DA's office is immune from law suits. If they were not, then any time a person was charged with a crime and then found not guilty or had the charge dismissed, they could run and sue the DA and the police. Most of the time, police officers are also immune from charges, unless it is is for blatant misconduct. You may or may not disagree with this, but it is the law and upheld in the courts. That being said,this case was never about prosecutor misconduct but about training of attorneys in the DA's office. From Clarence Thomas and majority ruling: ... Prosecutors testified that office policy was to turn crime lab reports and other scientific evidence overto the defense. They also testified that, after the discovery of the undisclosed crime lab report in 1999, prosecutorsdisagreed 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 indamages, and the District Court added more than $1million in attorney’s fees and costs. (emhasis mine) http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-571.pdf This is what the case as about, training prosecutors inthe DA's office. Not withholding evidence as the Sun says. Thomas went on to say that because attorneys are college trained and have to pass the Bar, they are well educated and because of their training, the lawyer's in the DA office should have known whether to turn over evidence or not. the majority of the court said that the lawyers didn't need training because of their education and training and overturned the case and the plaintiff got nothing. Now, can Thompson, the plaintiff can sue the individual attorney's I don't know. I do know that the courts in Louisiana can impose fines, sanctions and punish the lawyers involved by getting their law license revoked or suspended. None of this, of course, would help Thompson. But I think Thompson would have to prove that the attorney's acted with malice towards Thompson. I'm not sure if they can do that. I agree that Mr. Thompson got screwed big time by the justice system and he dos deserve some sort of compensation. But the point of this blog post is that the Las Vegas Sun either deliberately lied, was too lazy to look at the court record, too stupid to understand the ruling or the editorial is just racist because Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion. Which is it Sun?