The Wages of Sin Are….Nothing Much

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Generally speaking, prosecutors are protected from lawsuits even if they break the rules. And generally speaking, this is probably a good thing. The level of prosecutorial abuse that judges routinely tolerate is outrageous, but still, a wave of lawsuits against prosecutors from everyone ever jailed wrongly probably isn’t something we need.

But certainly there are limits. How about this, for example?

Prosecutors in the New Orleans district attorney’s office had intentionally hidden a blood test that would have unraveled the criminal case against [John] Thompson. By a stroke of luck, a young investigator scouring the crime lab files found a microfiche copy of it. Thompson’s blood type did not match. That single piece of evidence led eventually to Thompson being declared innocent of murder.

This came after 14 years on death row and one month before Thompson was scheduled to be executed. A New Orleans jury awarded him $14 million when he sued, but the case was appealed to the Supreme Court. So how did things go?

But oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the fall suggest he may not see a nickel of it. The high court has taken a dim view of suing prosecutors, and in Thompson’s case, the court’s conservatives led by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. questioned whether the district attorney’s office should be held responsible for the misdeeds of a few prosecutors.

This isn’t even fancy DNA evidence. Prosecutors deliberately withheld evidence that Thompson had the wrong blood type and blithely sent him to death row. And yet Sam Alito is disturbed at the idea that the district attorney’s office should be held responsible for the misdeeds of a few prosecutors. Jesus Christ.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate