Episode 7 Season 1 - The Essence of Louisianas Exonerations

This is a call to action for the Juneteenth organizations, Black Ministers, Fraternities, Sororities and all right thinking counterparts that celebrate Dr. King and all the soldiers involved in the Civil Rights Movement that worked so hard for us to have equal justice and be treated fairly in the Courts. 

Ask yourself, can we really continue to ignore the fact that those we pay to represent us in State courts be allowed to withhold exculpatory material evidence from the Defense without us demanding that there be major Accountability under the fullest extent of the law.

Yes, there are Federal and State laws that forbid such behaviors, they just haven't been applied when it comes to black people being wrongfully convicted and later exonerated. 

In addition to pursuing investigations into State Prosecutors that participate in these offensive behaviors, as a lower level of Accountability there are State Bar Rules that govern State Prosecutors but, even those have rarely been utilized when it comes to taking the freedom of a black man or other wrongfully convicted person that was later exonerated. 

This case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court but, what happened in the lower Louisiana Courts details the steps the Court found State Prosecutors took that resulted in what was later found to be a wrongful conviction that later resulted in an exoneration. 

Be sure to listen to each Episode of the Judge's rulings because it should make you wonder as it does me:  Why All the Disrespect for black men and others? Why all the Disrespect for the law?  Why all the Disrespect for the safety of the public and public trust? Why all the Disrespect for the Rules that govern lawyers? 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

I can't bite my tongue. I gotta find my tongue. Bite to fake them down, but dummy weasy in the court. Yeah, we take email on the bike down. You would tune in to the twist and rules podcasts. Take them down, Dumble Weasy and the court. Take 'em down, but the weasy in the court.

unknown 0:22

Take 'em up, break 'em up.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Gotta know the fact you would tuned in to the twist and rose podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

The Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office now concedes that in prosecuting respondent JT for attempted AY, prosecutors failed to disclose evidence that should have been turned over to the defense under Brady v. Maryland, 373, United States, 83, 1963. JT was convicted. Because of that conviction, JT elected not to testify in his own defense in his later trial for M, and he was again convicted. JT spent 18 years in prison, including 14 years on death row. One month before JT's scheduled execution, his investigator discovered the undisclosed evidence from his AY trial. The reviewing court determined that the evidence was exculpatory and both of JT's convictions were vacated. After his release from prison, JT sued petitioner Harry Conock in his official capacity as the Orleans Parish District Attorney for damages under revised statute Section 1979, Section 1983, JT alleged that Connick had failed to train his prosecutors adequately about their duty to produce exculpatory evidence and that the lack of training had caused the non-disclosure in JT's ROY case. The jury awarded JT $14 million, and the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed by an evenly divided N Bonc court. We granted Satoriari to decide whether a district attorney's office may be held liable under Section 1983 for failure to train based on a single Brady violation. We hold that it cannot. In early 1985, JT was charged with the M of Mr. L in New Orleans. Publicity following the M charge led the victims of an unrelated AY to identify JT as their attacker. The district attorney charged JT with attempted RY. As part of the RY investigation, a crime scene technician took from one of the victims' pants a swatch of fabric stained with the RY's blood. Approximately one week before JT's RY trial, the swatch was sent to the crime laboratory. Two days before the trial, assistant district attorney Bruce Whitaker received the crime lab's report, which stated that the perpetrator had blood type B. There is no evidence that the prosecutors ever had JT's blood tested or that they knew what his blood type was. Whitaker claimed he placed the report on Assistant District Attorney's James Williams' desk, but Williams denied seeing it. The report was never disclosed to JT's counsel. Williams tried the RY case with Assistant District Attorney Jerry Deegan. On the first day of the trial, Deegan checked all of the physical evidence in the case out of the police property room, including the blood-stained 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 JT of attempted AY. A few weeks later, Williams and special prosecutor Eric Dubalier tried JT for Mr. L's M. Because of the RY conviction, JT chose not to testify in his own defense. He was convicted and sentenced to death. In the 14 years following JT's M conviction, state and federal courts reviewed and denied his challenges to the conviction and sentence. The state scheduled JT's execution for May 20, 1999. In late April 1999, JT's private investigator discovered the crime lab report from the RY investigation in the files of the New Orleans Police Crime Laboratory. JT was tested and found to have blood type O, proving that the blood on the swatch was not his. JT's attorneys presented this evidence to the District Attorney's Office, which, in turn, moved to stay the execution and vacate JT's RY conviction. Footnote 1. The Louisiana Court of Appeals then reversed JT's M conviction, concluding that the RY conviction unconstitutionally deprived JT of his right to testify in his own defense at the M trial. In 2003, the District Attorney's Office retried JT for Mr. L.'s M. Footnote 2. The jury found him not guilty. JT then brought action against the District Attorney's Office, Conock, 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 JT's claim under Section 1983 that the District Attorney's Office had violated Brady by failing to disclose the crime lab report in his RY trial. See Brady 373 U.S. 83. JT alleged liability under two theories. One, the Brady violation was caused by an unconstitutional policy of the District Attorney's Office, and two, the violation was caused by Conock's deliberate indifference to an obvious need to train the prosecutors in his office in order to avoid such constitutional violations. Before trial, Connick conceded that the failure to produce the crime lab report constituted a Brady violation. Footnote 3. Accordingly, the district court instructed the jury that the only issue was whether the non-disclosure 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. 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's absent knowledge of JT's blood type. The jury rejected JT'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 JT $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 been deliberately indifferent to an obvious need for more or different Brady training because there was no evidence that he was aware of a pattern of similar Brady violations. The district court rejected this argument for the reasons that it had given in the summary judgment order. In that order, the court had concluded that a pattern of violations is not necessary to prove deliberate indifference when the need for training is, quote unquote, so obvious. Relying on Canton v. Harris 489, U.S. 378, 1989, the court had held that JT could demonstrate deliberate indifference by proving that, quote, the DA's office knew to a moral certainty that assistant district attorneys would acquire Brady material, that without training it is not always obvious what Brady requires, and that withholding Brady material will virtually always lead to a substantial violation of constitutional rights.