Today I have the unfortunate job of following up on the case of John Thompson, who was sent to death row in 1985 after a New Orleans DA deliberately withheld evidence showing that Thompson’s blood type didn’t match a previous crime he’d been convicted of, and also deliberately withheld various other pieces of evidence that exonerated Thompson of the murder he was charged with. After the murder charges were eventually tossed out, a court awarded him $14 million in civil damages, but on Tuesday the Supreme Court overturned the award:
In rejecting the judgment, Justice Thomas described the case as a “single incident” in which mistakes were made. He said Thompson did not prove a pattern of similar violations that would justify holding the city’s government liable for the wrongdoing. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined to form the majority.
There were at least four other prosecutors who knew about the blood test, as well as a number of other cases like this one in New Orleans through the years. Nonetheless, Clarence Thomas figures this was just a single bad apple. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
