CONNICK, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, ET AL. v. THOMPSON
No. 09-571
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 6, 2010—Decided March 29, 2011
563 U.S. 51
Stuart Kyle Duncan, Appellate Chief, Louisiana Attorney General‘s Office, argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs were James D. “Buddy” Caldwell, Attorney General, Ross W. Bergethon and Robert Abendroth, Assistant Attorneys General, Graymond F. Martin, and Donna R. Andrieu.
J. Gordon Cooney, Jr., argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief were Michael L. Banks, R. Ted Cruz, and Allyson N. Ho.*
*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were filed for the National District Attorneys Association et al. by Edward C. Dawson and Richard B. Farrer; for the National League of Cities et al. by Richard Ruda, Stephen B. Kinnaird, Alexander M. R. Lyon, and Stephanos Bibas; and for the Orleans Parish Assistant District Attorneys by Valentin M. Solino.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, New York University School of Law, et al. by Martin J. Siegel, Anthony S. Barkow, and David B. Edwards; for Former Federal Civil Rights Officials et al. by Paul D. Clement, Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, Adam Conrad, Kelly Shackelford, Hiram S. Sasser III, and Pamela S. Karlan; for the Innocence Network by Peter D. Isakoff, Keith A. Findley, Peter J. Neufeld, and Barry Scheck; and for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers by Joel B. Rudin and Joshua L. Dratel.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed for the Alliance Defense Fund et al. by Glen Lavy, Thomas Marcelle, and Ilya Shapiro; for the American Civil Liberties Union et al. by Lisa S. Blatt, John A. Freedman, Joshua P. Wilson, Steven R. Shapiro, and Mary Bauer; and for the District Attor-
OPINION
JUSTICE THOMAS delivered the opinion of the Court.
The Orleans Parish District Attorney‘s Office now concedes that, in prosecuting respondent John Thompson for attempted armed robbery, prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that should have been turned over to the defense under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963). Thompson was convicted. Because of that conviction Thompson elected not to testify in his own defense in his later trial for murder, and he was again convicted. Thompson spent 18 years in prison, including 14 years on death row. One month before Thompson‘s scheduled execution, his investigator discovered the undisclosed evidence from his armed robbery trial. The reviewing court determined that the evidence was exculpatory, and both of Thompson‘s convictions were vacated.
After his release from prison, Thompson sued petitioner Harry Connick, in his official capacity as the Orleans Parish district attorney, for damages under
I
A
In early 1985, John Thompson was charged with the murder of Raymond T. Liuzza, Jr., in New Orleans. Publicity following the murder charge led the victims of an unrelated
As part of the robbery investigation, a crime scene technician took from one of the victims’ pants a swatch of fabric stained with the robber‘s blood. Approximately one week before Thompson‘s armed robbery trial, the swatch was sent to the crime laboratory. Two days before the trial, Assistant District Attorney Bruce Whittaker received the crime lab‘s report, which stated that the perpetrator had blood type B. There is no evidence that the prosecutors ever had Thompson‘s blood tested or that they knew what his blood type was. Whittaker claimed he placed the report on Assistant District Attorney James Williams’ desk, but Williams denied seeing it. The report was never disclosed to Thompson‘s counsel.
Williams tried the armed robbery case with Assistant District Attorney Gerry Deegan. On the first day of trial, Deegan checked all of the physical evidence in the case out of the police property room, including the bloodstained swatch. Deegan then checked all of the evidence but the swatch into the courthouse property room. The prosecutors did not mention the swatch or the crime lab report at trial, and the jury convicted Thompson of attempted armed robbery.
A few weeks later, Williams and Special Prosecutor Eric Dubelier tried Thompson for the Liuzza murder. Because of the armed robbery conviction, Thompson chose not to testify in his own defense. He was convicted and sentenced to death. State v. Thompson, 516 So. 2d 349 (La. 1987). In the 14 years following Thompson‘s murder conviction, state and federal courts reviewed and denied his challenges to the conviction and sentence. See State ex rel. Thompson v. Cain, 95-2463 (La. 4/25/96), 672 So. 2d 906; Thompson v. Cain, 161 F. 3d 802 (CA5 1998). The State scheduled Thompson‘s execution for May 20, 1999.
B
Thompson then brought this action against the district attorney‘s office, Connick, Williams, and others, alleging that their conduct caused him to be wrongfully convicted, incarcerated for 18 years, and nearly executed. The only claim that proceeded to trial was Thompson‘s claim under
Before trial, Connick conceded that the failure to produce the crime lab report constituted a Brady violation.3 See Record EX608, EX880. Accordingly, the District Court instructed the jury that the “only issue” was whether the nondisclosure was caused by either a policy, practice, or custom of the district attorney‘s office or a deliberately indifferent failure to train the office‘s prosecutors. Id., at 1615.
Although no prosecutor remembered any specific training session regarding Brady prior to 1985, it was undisputed at trial that the prosecutors were familiar with the general Brady requirement that the State disclose to the defense evidence in its possession that is favorable to the accused. Prosecutors testified that office policy was to turn crime lab reports and other scientific evidence over to the defense. They also testified that, after the discovery of the undisclosed crime lab report in 1999, prosecutors disagreed 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 in damages, and the District Court added more than $1 million in attorney‘s fees and costs.
After the verdict, Connick renewed his objection—which he had raised on summary judgment—that he could not have
A panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The panel acknowledged that Thompson did not present evidence of a pattern of similar Brady violations, 553 F. 3d 836, 851 (2008), but held that Thompson did not need to prove a pattern, id., at 854. According to the panel, Thompson demonstrated that Connick was on notice of an obvious need for Brady training by presenting evidence “that attorneys, often fresh out of law school, would undoubtedly be required to confront Brady issues while at the DA‘s Office, that erroneous decisions regarding Brady evidence would result in serious constitutional violations, that resolution of Brady issues was often unclear, and that training in Brady would have been helpful.” 553 F. 3d, at 854.
II
The Brady violation conceded in this case occurred when one or more of the four prosecutors involved with Thompson‘s armed robbery prosecution failed to disclose the crime lab report to Thompson‘s counsel. Under Thompson‘s failure-to-train theory, he bore the burden of proving both (1) that Connick, the policymaker for the district attorney‘s office, was deliberately indifferent to the need to train the prosecutors about their Brady disclosure obligation with respect to evidence of this type and (2) that the lack of training actually caused the Brady violation in this case. Connick argues that he was entitled to judgment as a matter of law because Thompson did not prove that he was on actual or constructive notice of, and therefore deliberately indifferent to, a need for more or different Brady training. We agree.5
“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State . . . subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. . . .”
A municipality or other local government may be liable under this section if the governmental body itself “subjects” a person to a deprivation of rights or “causes” a person “to be subjected” to such deprivation. See Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658, 692 (1978). But, under
Plaintiffs who seek to impose liability on local governments under
In limited circumstances, a local government‘s decision not to train certain employees about their legal duty to avoid violating citizens’ rights may rise to the level of an official government policy for purposes of
“‘[D]eliberate indifference’ is a stringent standard of fault, requiring proof that a municipal actor disregarded a known or obvious consequence of his action.” Bryan Cty., 520 U. S., at 410. Thus, when city policymakers are on actual or constructive notice that a particular omission in their training program causes city employees to violate citizens’ constitutional rights, the city may be deemed deliberately indifferent if the policymakers choose to retain that program. Id., at 407. The city‘s “‘policy of inaction‘” in light of notice that its program will cause constitutional violations “is the functional equivalent of a decision by the city itself to violate
B
A pattern of similar constitutional violations by untrained employees is “ordinarily necessary” to demonstrate deliberate indifference for purposes of failure to train. Bryan Cty., 520 U. S., at 409. Policymakers’ “continued adherence to an approach that they know or should know has failed to prevent tortious conduct by employees may establish the conscious disregard for the consequences of their action—the ‘deliberate indifference‘—necessary to trigger municipal liability.” Id., at 407. Without notice that a course of training is deficient in a particular respect, decisionmakers can hardly be said to have deliberately chosen a training program that will cause violations of constitutional rights.
Although Thompson does not contend that he proved a pattern of similar Brady violations, 553 F. 3d, at 851, vacated, 578 F. 3d 293 (en banc), he points out that, during the 10 years preceding his armed robbery trial, Louisiana courts had overturned four convictions because of Brady violations by prosecutors in Connick‘s office.6 Those four reversals could not have put Connick on notice that the office‘s Brady training was inadequate with respect to the sort of Brady violation at issue here. None of those cases involved failure to disclose blood evidence, a crime lab report, or physical or
C
1
Instead of relying on a pattern of similar Brady violations, Thompson relies on the “single-incident” liability that this Court hypothesized in Canton. He contends that the Brady violation in his case was the “obvious” consequence of failing to provide specific Brady training, and that this showing of “obviousness” can substitute for the pattern of violations ordinarily necessary to establish municipal culpability.
In Canton, the Court left open the possibility that, “in a narrow range of circumstances,” a pattern of similar violations might not be necessary to show deliberate indifference. Bryan Cty., supra, at 409. The Court posed the hypothetical example of a city that arms its police force with firearms and deploys the armed officers into the public to capture fleeing felons without training the officers in the constitutional limitation on the use of deadly force. Canton, supra, at 390, n. 10. Given the known frequency with which police attempt to arrest fleeing felons and the “predictability that an officer lacking specific tools to handle that situation will violate citizens’ rights,” the Court theorized that a city‘s decision not to train the officers about constitutional limits on
Failure to train prosecutors in their Brady obligations does not fall within the narrow range of Canton‘s hypothesized single-incident liability. The obvious need for specific legal training that was present in the Canton scenario is absent here. Armed police must sometimes make split-second decisions with life-or-death consequences. There is no reason to assume that police academy applicants are familiar with the constitutional constraints on the use of deadly force. And, in the absence of training, there is no way for novice officers to obtain the legal knowledge they require. Under those circumstances there is an obvious need for some form of training. In stark contrast, legal “[t]raining is what differentiates attorneys from average public employees.” 578 F. 3d, at 304–305 (opinion of Clement, J.).
Attorneys are trained in the law and equipped with the tools to interpret and apply legal principles, understand constitutional limits, and exercise legal judgment. Before they may enter the profession and receive a law license, all attorneys must graduate from law school or pass a substantive examination; attorneys in the vast majority of jurisdictions must do both. See, e. g.,
Nor does professional training end at graduation. Most jurisdictions require attorneys to satisfy continuing-education requirements. See, e. g.,
Attorneys who practice with other attorneys, such as in district attorney‘s offices, also train on the job as they learn from more experienced attorneys. For instance, here in the Orleans Parish District Attorney‘s Office, junior prosecutors were trained by senior prosecutors who supervised them as they worked together to prepare cases for trial, and trial chiefs oversaw the preparation of the cases. Senior attorneys also circulated court decisions and instructional memoranda to keep the prosecutors abreast of relevant legal developments.
In addition, attorneys in all jurisdictions must satisfy character and fitness standards to receive a law license and are personally subject to an ethical regime designed to reinforce the profession‘s standards. See, e. g.,
In light of this regime of legal training and professional responsibility, recurring constitutional violations are not the “obvious consequence” of failing to provide prosecutors with formal in-house training about how to obey the law. Bryan Cty., 520 U. S., at 409. Prosecutors are not only equipped
A second significant difference between this case and the example in Canton is the nuance of the allegedly necessary training. The Canton hypothetical assumes that the armed police officers have no knowledge at all of the constitutional limits on the use of deadly force. But it is undisputed here that the prosecutors in Connick‘s office were familiar with the general Brady rule. Thompson‘s complaint therefore cannot rely on the utter lack of an ability to cope with constitutional situations that underlies the Canton hypothetical, but rather must assert that prosecutors were not trained about particular Brady evidence or the specific scenario related to the violation in his case. That sort of nuance simply cannot support an inference of deliberate indifference here. As the Court said in Canton, “[i]n virtually every instance where a person has had his or her constitutional rights violated by a city employee, a
We do not assume that prosecutors will always make correct Brady decisions or that guidance regarding specific Brady questions would not assist prosecutors. But showing merely that additional training would have been helpful in making difficult decisions does not establish municipal liability. “[P]rov[ing] that an injury or accident could have been avoided if an [employee] had had better or more training, sufficient to equip him to avoid the particular injury-causing conduct” will not suffice. Canton, supra, at 391. The possibility of single-incident liability that the Court left open in Canton is not this case.10
2
The dissent rejects our holding that Canton‘s hypothesized single-incident liability does not, as a legal matter, encompass failure to train prosecutors in their Brady obligation. It would instead apply the Canton hypothetical to this case, and thus devotes almost all of its opinion to explaining
By the end of its opinion, however, the dissent finally reveals that its real disagreement is not with our holding today, but with this Court‘s precedent. The dissent does not see “any reason,” post, at 108, for the Court‘s conclusion in Bryan County that a pattern of violations is “ordinarily necessary” to demonstrate deliberate indifference for purposes of failure to train, 520 U. S., at 409. Cf. id., at 406–408 (explaining why a pattern of violations is ordinarily necessary). But cf. post, at 108 (describing our reliance on Bryan County as “imply[ing]” a new “limitation” on
3
The District Court and the Court of Appeals panel erroneously believed that Thompson had proved deliberate indifference by showing the “obviousness” of a need for additional training. They based this conclusion on Connick‘s awareness that (1) prosecutors would confront Brady issues while
It does not follow that, because Brady has gray areas and some Brady decisions are difficult, prosecutors will so obviously make wrong decisions that failing to train them amounts to “a decision by the city itself to violate the Constitution.” Canton, supra, at 395 (O‘Connor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). To prove deliberate indifference, Thompson needed to show that Connick was on notice that, absent additional specified training, it was “highly predictable” that the prosecutors in his office would be confounded by those gray areas and make incorrect Brady decisions as a result. In fact, Thompson had to show that it was so predictable that failing to train the prosecutors amounted to conscious disregard for defendants’ Brady rights. See Bryan Cty., supra, at 409; Canton, supra, at 389. He did not do so.
III
The role of a prosecutor is to see that justice is done. Berger v. United States, 295 U. S. 78, 88 (1935). “It is as much [a prosecutor‘s] duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.” Ibid. By their own admission, the prosecutors who tried Thompson‘s armed robbery case failed to carry out that responsibility. But the only issue before us is whether Connick, as the policymaker for the district attorney‘s office, was deliberately indifferent to the need to train the attorneys under his authority.
We conclude that this case does not fall within the narrow range of “single-incident” liability hypothesized in Canton as
The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is reversed.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE SCALIA, with whom JUSTICE ALITO joins, concurring.
I join the Court‘s opinion in full. I write separately only to address several aspects of the dissent.
1. The dissent‘s lengthy excavation of the trial record is a puzzling exertion. The question presented for our review is whether a municipality is liable for a single Brady violation by one of its prosecutors, even though no pattern or practice of prior violations put the municipality on notice of a need for specific training that would have prevented it. See Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963). That question is a legal one: whether a Brady violation presents one of those rare circumstances we hypothesized in Canton‘s footnote 10, in which the need for training in constitutional requirements is so obvious ex ante that the municipality‘s failure to provide that training amounts to deliberate indifference to constitutional violations. See Canton v. Harris, 489 U. S. 378, 390, n. 10 (1989).
The dissent defers consideration of this question until the twenty-third page of its opinion. It first devotes considerable space to allegations that Connick‘s prosecutors misunderstood Brady when asked about it at trial, see post, at 93-95 (opinion of GINSBURG, J.), and to supposed gaps in the
“First: The District Attorney was certain that prosecutors would confront the situation where they would have to decide which evidence was required by the constitution to be provided to an accused[;]
“Second: The situation involved a difficult choice, or one that prosecutors had a history of mishandling, such that additional training, supervision, or monitoring was clearly needed[; and]
“Third: The wrong choice by a prosecutor in that situation will frequently cause a deprivation of an accused‘s constitutional rights.” App. 828.
That theory of deliberate indifference would repeal the law of Monell1 in favor of the Law of Large Numbers. Brady mistakes are inevitable. So are all species of error routinely confronted by prosecutors: authorizing a bad warrant; losing a Batson2 claim; crossing the line in closing argument; or eliciting hearsay that violates the Confrontation Clause. Nevertheless, we do not have ”de facto respondeat superior liability,” Canton, 489 U. S., at 392, for each such violation under the rubric of failure to train simply because the municipality does not have a professional educational program cov-
That result cannot be squared with our admonition that failure-to-train liability is available only in “limited circumstances,” id., at 387, and that a pattern of constitutional violations is “ordinarily necessary to establish municipal culpability and causation,” Board of Comm‘rs of Bryan Cty. v. Brown, 520 U. S. 397, 409 (1997). These restrictions are indispensable because without them, “failure to train” would become a talismanic incantation producing municipal liability “[i]n virtually every instance where a person has had his or her constitutional rights violated by a city employee“-which is what Monell rejects. Canton, 489 U. S., at 392. Worse, it would “engage the federal courts in an endless exercise of second-guessing municipal employee-training programs,” thereby diminishing the autonomy of state and local governments. Ibid.
2. Perhaps for that reason, the dissent does not seriously contend that Thompson‘s theory of recovery was proper. Rather, it accuses Connick of acquiescing in that theory at trial. See post, at 102. The accusation is false. Connick‘s
“[Connick‘s counsel]: Also, as part of that definition in that same location, Your Honor, we would like to include language that says that deliberate indifference to training requires a pattern of similar violations and proof of deliberate indifference requires more than a single isolated act.
“[Thompson‘s counsel]: That‘s not the law, Your Honor.
“THE COURT: No, I‘m not giving that. That was in your motion for summary judgment that I denied.” Tr. 1013.
Nothing more is required to preserve a claim of error. See
3. But in any event, to recover from a municipality under
4. The dissent suspends disbelief about this, insisting that with proper Brady training, “surely at least one” of the prosecutors in Thompson‘s trial would have turned over the lab report and blood swatch. Post, at 98. But training must consist of more than mere broad encomiums of Brady: We have made clear that “the identified deficiency in a city‘s training program [must be] closely related to the ultimate injury.” Canton, supra, at 391. So even indulging the dissent‘s assumption that Thompson‘s prosecutors failed to disclose the lab report in good faith in a way that could be prevented by training-what sort of training would have prevented the good-faith nondisclosure of a blood report not known to be exculpatory?
Since Thompson‘s trial, however, we have decided a case that appears to say just the opposite of the training the dissent would require: In Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U. S. 51, 58 (1988), we held that “unless a criminal defendant can show bad faith on the part of the police, failure to preserve potentially useful evidence does not constitute a denial of due process of law.” We acknowledged that ”Brady... makes the good or bad faith of the State irrelevant when the State fails to disclose to the defendant material exculpatory evidence,” but concluded that “the Due Process Clause requires a dif-
5. By now the reader has doubtless guessed the best-kept secret of this case: There was probably no Brady violation at all-except for Deegan‘s (which, since it was a bad-faith, knowing violation, could not possibly be attributed to lack of training).6 The dissent surely knows this, which is why it leans heavily on the fact that Connick conceded that Brady was violated. I can honor that concession in my analysis of the case because even if it extends beyond Deegan‘s deliberate actions, it remains irrelevant to Connick‘s training obligations. For any Brady violation apart from Deegan‘s was surely on the very frontier of our Brady jurisprudence; Connick could not possibly have been on notice decades ago that he was required to instruct his prosecutors to respect a right to untested evidence that we had not (and still have not) recognized. As a consequence, even if I accepted the dissent‘s conclusion that failure-to-train liability could be premised on a single Brady error, I could not agree that the lack of an accurate training regimen caused the violation Connick has conceded.
In Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83, 87 (1963), this Court held that due process requires the prosecution to turn over evidence favorable to the accused and material to his guilt or punishment. That obligation, the parties have stipulated, was dishonored in this case; consequently, John Thompson spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them isolated on death row, before the truth came to light: He was innocent of the charge of attempted armed robbery, and his subsequent trial on a murder charge, by prosecutorial design, was fundamentally unfair.
The Court holds that the Orleans Parish District Attorney‘s Office (District Attorney‘s Office or Office) cannot be held liable, in a civil rights action under
From the top down, the evidence showed, members of the District Attorney‘s Office, including the District Attorney himself, misperceived Brady‘s compass and therefore inadequately attended to their disclosure obligations. Throughout the pretrial and trial proceedings against Thompson, the team of four engaged in prosecuting him for armed robbery and murder hid from the defense and the court exculpatory information Thompson requested and had a constitutional right to receive. The prosecutors did so despite multiple opportunities, spanning nearly two decades, to set the record straight. Based on the prosecutors’ conduct relating to Thompson‘s trials, a fact trier could reasonably conclude that
What happened here, the Court‘s opinion obscures, was no momentary oversight, no single incident of a lone officer‘s misconduct. Instead, the evidence demonstrated that misperception and disregard of Brady‘s disclosure requirements were pervasive in Orleans Parish. That evidence, I would hold, established persistent, deliberately indifferent conduct for which the District Attorney‘s Office bears responsibility under
I dissent from the Court‘s judgment mindful that Brady violations, as this case illustrates, are not easily detected. But for a chance discovery made by a defense team investigator weeks before Thompson‘s scheduled execution, the evidence that led to his exoneration might have remained under wraps. The prosecutorial concealment Thompson encountered, however, is bound to be repeated unless municipal agencies bear responsibility-made tangible by
I
I turn first to a contextual account of the Brady violations that infected Thompson‘s trials.
A
In the early morning hours of December 6, 1984, an assailant shot and killed Raymond T. Liuzza, Jr., son of a prominent New Orleans business executive, on the street fronting the victim‘s home. Only one witness saw the assailant. As recorded in two contemporaneous police reports, that
While engaged in the murder investigation, the Orleans Parish prosecutors linked Thompson to another violent crime committed three weeks later. On December 28, an assailant attempted to rob three siblings at gunpoint. During the struggle, the perpetrator‘s blood stained the oldest child‘s pant leg. That blood, preserved on a swatch of fabric cut from the pant leg by a crime scene analyst, was eventually tested. The test conclusively established that the perpetrator‘s blood was type B. Id., at EX151. Thompson‘s blood is type O. His prosecutors failed to disclose the existence of the swatch or the test results.
B
One month after the Liuzza murder, Richard Perkins, a man who knew Thompson, approached the Liuzza family. Perkins did so after the family‘s announcement of a $15,000 reward for information leading to the murderer‘s conviction. Police officers surreptitiously recorded the Perkins-Liuzza conversations.2 As documented on tape, Perkins told the family, “I don‘t mind helping [you] catch [the perpetrator],... but I would like [you] to help me and, you know, I‘ll help
Freeman was six feet tall and went by the name “Kojak” because he kept his hair so closely trimmed that his scalp was visible. Unlike Thompson, Freeman fit the eyewitness’ initial description of the Liuzza assailant‘s height and hair style. As the Court notes, ante, at 56, n. 2, Freeman became the key witness for the prosecution at Thompson‘s trial for the murder of Liuzza.
After Thompson‘s arrest for the Liuzza murder, the father of the armed robbery victims saw a newspaper photo of Thompson with a large Afro hairstyle and showed it to his children. He reported to the District Attorney‘s Office that the children had identified Thompson as their attacker, and the children then picked that same photo out of a “photographic lineup.” Record EX120, EX642-EX643. Indicting Thompson on the basis of these questionable identifications, the District Attorney‘s Office did not pause to test the pant leg swatch dyed by the perpetrator‘s blood. This lapse ignored or overlooked a prosecutor‘s notation that the Office “may wish to do [a] blood test.” Id., at EX122.
The murder trial was scheduled to begin in mid-March 1985. Armed with the later indictment against Thompson for robbery, however, the prosecutors made a strategic choice: They switched the order of the two trials, proceeding first on the robbery indictment. Id., at EX128-EX129. Their aim was twofold. A robbery conviction gained first would serve to inhibit Thompson from testifying in his own defense at the murder trial, for the prior conviction could be
Recognizing the need for an effective prosecution team, petitioner Harry F. Connick, District Attorney for the Parish of Orleans, appointed his third-in-command, Eric Dubelier, as special prosecutor in both cases. Dubelier enlisted Jim Williams to try the armed robbery case and to assist him in the murder case. Gerry Deegan assisted Williams in the armed robbery case. Bruce Whittaker, the fourth prosecutor involved in the cases, had approved Thompson‘s armed robbery indictment.3
C
During pretrial proceedings in the armed robbery case, Thompson filed a motion requesting access to all materials and information “favorable to the defendant” and “material and relevant to the issue of guilt or punishment,” as well as “any results or reports” of “scientific tests or experiments.” Id., at EX144, EX145. Prosecutorial responses to this motion fell far short of Brady compliance.4
Second, Dubelier or Whittaker ordered the crime laboratory to rush a pretrial test of the swatch. Tr. 952-954. Whittaker received the lab report, addressed to his attention, two days before trial commenced. Immediately thereafter, he placed the lab report on Williams’ desk. Record EX151, EX589. Although the lab report conclusively identified the perpetrator‘s blood type, id., at EX151, the District Attorney‘s Office never revealed the report to the defense.6
Third, Deegan checked the swatch out of the property room on the morning of the first day of trial, but the prosecution did not produce the swatch at trial. Id., at EX43. Deegan did not return the swatch to the property room after trial, and the swatch has never been found. Tr. of Oral Arg. 37.
“[B]ased solely on the descriptions” provided by the three victims, Record 683, the jury convicted Thompson of attempted armed robbery. The court sentenced him to 49.5 years without possibility of parole-the maximum available sentence.
D
Prosecutors continued to disregard Brady during the murder trial, held in May 1985, at which the prosecution‘s order-of-trial strategy achieved its aim.7 By prosecuting Thompson for armed robbery first-and withholding blood evidence that might have exonerated Thompson of that charge-the District Attorney‘s Office disabled Thompson from testifying in his own defense at the murder trial.8 As earlier observed, see supra, at 82-83, impeaching use of the prior conviction would have severely undermined Thompson‘s credibility. And because Thompson was effectively stopped from testifying in his own defense, the testimony of the witnesses against him gained force. The prosecution‘s failure to reveal
First, the prosecution undermined Thompson‘s efforts to impeach Perkins. Perkins testified that he volunteered information to the police with no knowledge of reward money. Record EX366, EX372-EX373. Because prosecutors had not produced the audiotapes of Perkins’ conversations with the Liuzza family (or a police summary of the tapes), Thompson‘s attorneys could do little to cast doubt on Perkins’ credibility. In closing argument, the prosecution emphasized that Thompson presented no “direct evidence” that reward money had motivated any of the witnesses. Id., at EX3171-EX3172.
Second, the prosecution impeded Thompson‘s impeachment of key witness Kevin Freeman. It did so by failing to disclose a police report containing Perkins’ account of what he had learned from Freeman about the murder. See supra, at 82. Freeman‘s trial testimony was materially inconsistent with that report. Tr. 382-384, 612-614; Record EX270-EX274. Lacking any knowledge of the police report, Thompson could not point to the inconsistencies.
Third, and most vital, the eyewitness’ initial description of the assailant‘s hair, see supra, at 81, was of prime relevance, for it suggested that Freeman, not Thompson, murdered Liuzza, see supra, at 82. The materiality of the eyewitness’ contemporaneous description of the murderer should have been altogether apparent to the prosecution. Failure to produce the police reports setting out what the eyewitness first said not only undermined efforts to impeach that witness and the police officer who initially interviewed him. The omission left defense counsel without knowledge that the prosecutors were restyling the killer‘s “close cut hair” into an “Afro.”
Prosecutors finessed the discrepancy between the eyewitness’ initial description and Thompson‘s appearance. They asked leading questions prompting the eyewitness to agree
The jury found Thompson guilty of first-degree murder. Having prevented Thompson from testifying that Freeman was the killer, the prosecution delivered its ultimate argument. Because Thompson was already serving a near-life sentence for attempted armed robbery, the prosecution urged, the only way to punish him for murder was to execute him. The strategy worked as planned; Thompson was sentenced to death.
E
Thompson discovered the prosecutors’ misconduct through a serendipitous series of events. In 1994, nine years after Thompson‘s convictions, Deegan, the assistant prosecutor in the armed robbery trial, learned he was terminally ill. Soon thereafter, Deegan confessed to his friend Michael Riehlmann that he had suppressed blood evidence in the armed robbery case. Id., at EX709. Deegan did not heed Riehlmann‘s counsel to reveal what he had done. For five years, Riehlmann, himself a former Orleans Parish prosecutor, kept Deegan‘s confession to himself. Id., at EX712-EX713.
On April 16, 1999, the State of Louisiana scheduled Thompson‘s execution. Id., at EX1366-EX1367. In an eleventh-hour effort to save his life, Thompson‘s attorneys hired a private investigator. Deep in the crime lab archives, the investigator unearthed a microfiche copy of the lab report identifying the robber‘s blood type. The copy showed that the report had been addressed to Whittaker. See
Thompson‘s lawyers presented to the trial court the crime lab report showing that the robber‘s blood type was B, and a report identifying Thompson‘s blood type as O. This evidence proved Thompson innocent of the robbery. The court immediately stayed Thompson‘s execution, id., at EX590, and commenced proceedings to assess the newly discovered evidence.
Connick sought an abbreviated hearing. A full hearing was unnecessary, he urged, because the Office had confessed error and had moved to dismiss the armed robbery charges. See, e. g., id., at EX617. The court insisted on a public hearing. Given “the history of this case,” the court said, it “was not willing to accept the representations that [Connick] and [his] office made [in their motion to dismiss],” id., at EX882. After a full day‘s hearing, the court vacated Thompson‘s attempted armed robbery conviction and dismissed the charges. Before doing so, the court admonished:
“[A]ll day long there have been a number of young Assistant D. A.‘s... sitting in this courtroom watching this, and I hope they take home... and take to heart the message that this kind of conduct cannot go on in this Parish if this Criminal Justice System is going to work.” Id., at EX883.
The District Attorney‘s Office then initiated grand jury proceedings against the prosecutors who had withheld the lab report. Connick terminated the grand jury after just one day. He maintained that the lab report would not be
F
Thereafter, the Louisiana Court of Appeal reversed Thompson‘s murder conviction. State v. Thompson, 2002-0361, p. 10 (7/17/02), 825 So. 2d 552, 558. The unlawfully procured robbery conviction, the court held, had violated Thompson‘s right to testify and thus fully present his defense in the murder trial. Id., at 557. The merits of several Brady claims arising out of the murder trial, the court observed, had therefore become “moot.” 825 So. 2d, at 555; see also Record 684.9 But cf. ante, at 63, n. 7, 69, n. 11 (suggesting that there were no Brady violations in the murder prosecution because no court had adjudicated any violations).10
Undeterred by his assistants’ disregard of Thompson‘s rights, Connick retried him for the Liuzza murder. Thompson‘s defense was bolstered by evidence earlier unavailable to him: ten exhibits the prosecution had not disclosed when Thompson was first tried. The newly produced items included police reports describing the assailant in the murder case as having “close cut” hair, the police report recounting Perkins’ meetings with the Liuzza family, see supra, at 81-82, audio recordings of those meetings, and a 35-page supplemental police report. After deliberating for only 35 minutes, the jury found Thompson not guilty.
On May 9, 2003, having served more than 18 years in prison for crimes he did not commit, Thompson was released.
II
On July 16, 2003, Thompson commenced a civil action under
Having weighed all the evidence, the jury in the
Over 20 years ago, we observed that a municipality‘s failure to provide training may be so egregious that, even without notice of prior constitutional violations, the failure “could properly be characterized as ‘deliberate indifference’ to constitutional rights.” Canton, 489 U. S., at 390, n. 10. “[I]n light of the duties assigned to specific officers or employees,” Canton recognized, “it may happen that . . . the need for more or different training is so obvious, and the inadequacy so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights, that the policymakers . . . can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need.” Id., at 390. Thompson presented convincing evidence to satisfy this standard.
Thompson‘s
The jury found, however, that Connick was deliberately indifferent to the need to train prosecutors about Brady‘s command. On the special verdict form, the jury answered yes to the following question:
“Was the Brady violation in the armed robbery case or any infringements of John Thompson‘s rights in the murder trial substantially caused by [Connick‘s] failure, through deliberate indifference, to establish policies and procedures to protect one accused of a crime from these constitutional violations?” Record 1585.
Consistent with the question put to the jury, and without objection, the court instructed the jurors: “[Y]ou are not limited to the nonproduced blood evidence and the resulting infringement of Mr. Thompson‘s right to testify at the murder trial. You may consider all of the evidence presented during this trial.” Tr. 1099; Record 1620.11 But cf. ante, at 54, 59,
Abundant evidence supported the jury‘s finding that additional Brady training was obviously necessary to ensure that Brady violations would not occur: (1) Connick, the Office‘s sole policymaker, misunderstood Brady. (2) Other leaders in the Office, who bore direct responsibility for training less experienced prosecutors, were similarly uninformed about Brady. (3) Prosecutors in the Office received no Brady training. (4) The Office shirked its responsibility to keep prosecutors abreast of relevant legal developments concerning Brady requirements. As a result of these multiple shortfalls, it was hardly surprising that Brady violations in fact occurred, severely undermining the integrity of Thompson‘s trials.
1
Connick was the Office‘s sole policymaker, and his testimony exposed a flawed understanding of a prosecutor‘s Brady obligations. Connick admitted to the jury that his
2
The testimony of other leaders in the District Attorney‘s Office revealed similar misunderstandings. Those misunderstandings, the jury could find, were in large part responsible for the gross disregard of Brady rights Thompson experienced. Dubelier admitted that he never reviewed police files, but simply relied on the police to flag any potential Brady information. Tr. 542. The court, however, instructed the jury that an individual prosecutor has a “duty . . . to learn of any favorable evidence known to others acting on the government‘s behalf in the case, including the police.” Id., at 1095; Record 1614. Williams was asked whether ”Brady material includes documents in the possession of the district attorney that could be used to impeach a witness, to show that he‘s lying“; he responded simply, and mistakenly, “No.” Tr. 381. The testimony of “high-ranking individuals in the Orleans Parish District Attorney‘s Office,” Thompson‘s expert explained,12 exposed “complete errors . . . as to what
The jury could attribute the violations of Thompson‘s rights directly to prosecutors’ misapprehension of Brady. The prosecution had no obligation to produce the “close-cut hair” police reports, Williams maintained, because newspaper reports had suggested that witness descriptions were not consistent with Thompson‘s appearance. Therefore, Williams urged, the defense already “had everything.” Tr. 139. Dubelier tendered an alternative explanation for the nondisclosure. In Dubelier‘s view, the descriptions were not “inconsistent with [Thompson‘s] appearance,” as portrayed in a police photograph showing Thompson‘s hair extending at least three inches above his forehead. Id., at 171-172; Record EX73. Williams insisted that he had discharged the prosecution‘s duty to disclose the blood evidence by mentioning, in a motion hearing, that the prosecution intended to obtain a blood sample from Thompson. Tr. 393-394. During the armed robbery trial, Williams told one of the victims that the results of the blood test made on the swatch had been “inconclusive.” Id., at 962. And he testified in the
Connick should have comprehended that Orleans Parish prosecutors lacked essential guidance on Brady and its application. In fact, Connick has effectively conceded that Brady training in his Office was inadequate. Tr. of Oral Arg. 60. Connick explained to the jury that prosecutors’ offices must “make . . . very clear to [new prosecutors] what their responsibility [i]s” under Brady and must not “giv[e] them a lot of leeway.” Tr. 834-835. But the jury heard ample evidence that Connick‘s Office gave prosecutors no Brady guidance, and had installed no procedures to monitor Brady compliance.
In 1985, Connick acknowledged, many of his prosecutors “were coming fresh out of law school,” and the Office‘s “[h]uge turnover” allowed attorneys with little experience to advance quickly to supervisory positions. See Tr. 853-854, 832. By 1985, Dubelier and Williams were two of the highest ranking attorneys in the Office, id., at 342, 356-357, yet neither man had even five years of experience as a prosecutor, see supra, at 83, n. 3; Record EX746; Tr. 55, 571-576. Dubelier and Williams learned the prosecutorial craft in Connick‘s Office, and, as earlier observed, see supra, at 95, their testimony manifested a woefully deficient understanding of Brady. Dubelier and Williams told the jury that they did not recall any Brady training in the Office. Tr. 170-171, 364.
Connick testified that he relied on supervisors, including Dubelier and Williams, to ensure prosecutors were familiar with their Brady obligations. Tr. 805-806. Yet Connick did not inquire whether the supervisors themselves understood the importance of teaching newer prosecutors about Brady. Riehlmann could not “recall that [he] was ever trained or instructed by anybody about [his] Brady obligations,” on the job or otherwise. Tr. 728-729. Whittaker agreed it was possible for “inexperienced lawyers, just a few weeks out of law school with no training,” to bear responsi
Thompson‘s expert characterized Connick‘s supervision regarding Brady as “the blind leading the blind.” Tr. 458. For example, in 1985 trial attorneys “sometimes . . . went to Mr. Connick” with Brady questions, “and he would tell them” how to proceed. Tr. 892. But Connick acknowledged that he had “stopped reading law books and looking at opinions” when he was first elected District Attorney in 1974. Id., at 175-176.
As part of their training, prosecutors purportedly attended a pretrial conference with the Office‘s chief of trials before taking a case to trial. Connick intended the practice to provide both training and accountability. But it achieved neither aim in Thompson‘s prosecutions, for Dubelier and Williams, as senior prosecutors in the Office, were free to take cases to trial without pretrying them, and that is just how they proceeded in Thompson‘s prosecutions. Id., at 901-902; Record 685. But cf. ante, at 65 (“[T]rial chiefs oversaw the preparation of the cases.“).
Prosecutors confirmed that training in the District Attorney‘s Office, overall, was deficient. Soon after Connick retired, a survey of assistant district attorneys in the Office revealed that more than half felt that they had not received the training they needed to do their jobs. Tr. 178.
Thompson, it bears emphasis, is not complaining about the absence of formal training sessions. Tr. of Oral Arg. 55. But cf. ante, at 68. His complaint does not demand that Brady compliance be enforced in any particular way. He asks only that Brady obligations be communicated accurately and genuinely enforced.13 Because that did not happen in
4
Louisiana did not require continuing legal education at the time of Thompson‘s trials. Tr. 361. But cf. ante, at 65. Primary responsibility for keeping prosecutors au courant with developments in the law, therefore, resided in the District Attorney‘s Office. Over the course of Connick‘s tenure as District Attorney, the jury learned, the Office‘s chief of appeals circulated memoranda when appellate courts issued important opinions. Tr. 751-754, 798.
The 1987 Office policy manual was a compilation of memoranda on criminal law and practice circulated to prosecutors from 1974, when Connick became District Attorney, through 1987. Id., at 798. The manual contained four sentences, nothing more, on Brady.15 This slim instruction, the jury
As earlier noted, see supra, at 88-89, Connick resisted an effort to hold prosecutors accountable for Brady compliance because he felt the effort would “make [his] job more difficult.” Tr. 978. He never disciplined or fired a single prosecutor for violating Brady. Tr. 182-183. The jury was told of this Court‘s decision in Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U. S. 419 (1995), a capital case prosecuted by Connick‘s Office that garnered attention because it featured “so many instances of the state‘s failure to disclose exculpatory evidence.” Id., at 455 (Stevens, J., concurring). When questioned about Kyles, Connick told the jury he was satisfied with his Office‘s practices and saw no need, occasioned by Kyles, to make any changes. Tr. 184-185. In both quantity and quality, then, the evidence canvassed here was more than sufficient to warrant a jury determination that Connick and the prosecutors who served under him were not merely negligent regarding Brady. Rather, they were deliberately indifferent to what the law requires.
B
In Canton, this Court spoke of circumstances in which the need for training may be “so obvious,” and the lack of training “so likely” to result in constitutional violations, that policymakers who do not provide for the requisite training “can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need” for such training. 489 U. S., at 390.
Canton offered an often-cited illustration. “[C]ity policymakers know to a moral certainty that their police officers will be required to arrest fleeing felons.” Ibid., n. 10. Those policymakers, Canton observed, equip police officers with firearms to facilitate such arrests. Ibid. The need to instruct armed officers about “constitutional limitations on the use of deadly force,” Canton said, is “‘so obvious,’ that failure to [train the officers] could properly be characterized as ‘deliberate indifference’ to constitutional rights.” Ibid.
The District Court, tracking Canton‘s language, instructed the jury that Thompson could prevail on his “deliberate indifference” claim only if the evidence persuaded the jury on three points. First, Connick “was certain that prosecutors would confront the situation where they would have to decide which evidence was required by the Constitution to be provided to the accused.” Tr. 1099. Second, “the situation involved a difficult choice[,] or one that prosecutors had a history of mishandling, such that additional training, supervision or monitoring was clearly needed.” Ibid. Third, “the wrong choice by a prosecutor in that situation would frequently cause a deprivation of an accused‘s constitutional rights.” Ibid.; Record 1619-1620; see Canton, 489 U. S., at 390, and n. 10; Walker v. New York, 974 F. 2d 293, 297-298 (CA2 1992).17
The jury, furthermore, could reasonably find that Brady rights may involve choices so difficult that Connick obviously knew or should have known prosecutors needed more than perfunctory training to make the correct choices. See Canton, 489 U. S., at 390, and n. 10.19 As demonstrated earlier, see supra, at 94-96, even at trial prosecutors failed to give an accurate account of their Brady obligations. And, again as emphasized earlier, see supra, at 96-98, the evidence permitted the jury to conclude that Connick should have known Brady training in his office bordered on “zero.” See Tr. of Oral Arg. 41. Moreover, Connick understood that newer prosecutors needed “very clear” guidance and should not be left to grapple with Brady on their own. Tr. 834-835. It was thus “obvious” to him, the jury could find, that constitutional rights would be in jeopardy if prosecutors received slim to no Brady training.
Based on the evidence presented, the jury could conclude that Brady errors by untrained prosecutors would frequently cause deprivations of defendants’ constitutional rights. The jury learned of several Brady oversights in Thompson‘s trials and heard testimony that Connick‘s Office had one of the worst Brady records in the country. Tr. 163. Because prosecutors faced considerable pressure to get convictions, id., at 317, 341, and were instructed to “turn over what was required by state and federal law, but no more,” Brief for
In sum, despite JUSTICE SCALIA‘S protestations to the contrary, ante, at 72, 76, the Brady violations in Thompson‘s prosecutions were not singular and they were not aberrational. They were just what one would expect given the attitude toward Brady pervasive in the District Attorney‘s Office. Thompson demonstrated that no fewer than five prosecutors—the four trial prosecutors and Riehlmann—disregarded his Brady rights. He established that they kept from him, year upon year, evidence vital to his defense. Their conduct, he showed with equal force, was a foreseeable consequence of lax training in, and absence of monitoring of, a legal requirement fundamental to a fair trial.20
Unquestionably, a municipality that leaves police officers untrained in constitutional limits on the use of deadly weapons places lives in jeopardy. Canton, 489 U. S., at 390, n. 10. But as this case so vividly shows, a municipality that empowers prosecutors to press for a death sentence without ensuring that those prosecutors know and honor Brady rights may be no less “deliberately indifferent” to the risk to innocent lives.
Brady, this Court has long recognized, is among the most basic safeguards brigading a criminal defendant‘s fair trial right. See Cone v. Bell, 556 U. S. 449, 451 (2009). See also United States v. Bagley, 473 U. S. 667, 695 (1985) (Marshall, J., dissenting). Vigilance in superintending prosecutors’ attention to Brady‘s requirement is all the more important for
The Court nevertheless holds Canton‘s example inapposite. It maintains that professional obligations, ethics rules, and training—including on-the-job training—set attorneys apart from other municipal employees, including rookie police officers. Ante, at 64-68. Connick “had every incentive at trial to attempt to establish” that he could reasonably rely on the professional education and status of his staff. Cf. ante, at 62, n. 6. But the jury heard and rejected his argument to that effect. Tr. 364, 576-577, 834-835.
The Court advances Connick‘s argument with greater clarity, but with no greater support. On what basis can one be confident that law schools acquaint students with prosecutors’ unique obligation under Brady? Whittaker told the jury he did not recall covering Brady in his criminal procedure class in law school. Tr. 335. Dubelier‘s alma mater, like most other law faculties, does not make criminal procedure a required course.21
Connick suggested that the bar examination ensures that new attorneys will know what Brady demands. Tr. 835. Research indicates, however, that from 1980 to the present, Brady questions have not accounted for even 10% of the total points in the criminal law and procedure section of any administration of the Louisiana Bar Examination.22 A person sitting for the Louisiana Bar Examination, moreover, need
The majority‘s suggestion that lawyers do not need Brady training because they “are equipped with the tools to find, interpret, and apply legal principles,” ante, at 70, “blinks reality” and is belied by the facts of this case. See Brief for Former Federal Civil Rights Officials and Prosecutors as Amici Curiae 13 (hereinafter Prosecutors Brief). Connick himself recognized that his prosecutors, because of their inexperience, were not so equipped. Indeed, “understanding and complying with Brady obligations are not easy tasks, and the appropriate way to resolve Brady issues is not always self-evident.” Prosecutors Brief 6. ”Brady compliance,” therefore, “is too much at risk, and too fundamental to the fairness of our criminal justice system, to be taken for granted,” and “training remains critical.” Id., at 3, 7.
The majority further suggests that a prior pattern of similar violations is necessary to show deliberate indifference to defendants’ Brady rights. See ante, at 57-59, and n. 4, 63-64.24
A district attorney aware of his office‘s high turnover rate, who recruits prosecutors fresh out of law school and promotes them rapidly through the ranks, bears responsibility
* * *
For the reasons stated, I would affirm the judgment of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Like that court and, before it, the District Court, I would uphold the jury‘s verdict awarding damages to Thompson for the gross, deliberately indifferent, and long-continuing violation of his fair trial right.