Why does Justice Thomas usually side with cheating prosecutors?
For the Prosecution, Justice Clarence Thomas
Why does the justice usually side with cheating prosecutors, even when the evidence against them is clear and damning?
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All interesting stuff. But if true history is in the details, I hope Justice Thomas' future biographers will also take a long look at his dubious work in cases involving prosecutorial misconduct. At a time when Americans are just now awakening to the ugly truth about their justice systems, when dozens of capital defendants each year are exonerated, it's remarkable that Justice Thomas continues to adhere to a grim philosophy that justifies constitutional violations and excuses cheating on the part of prosecutors.
Last year, for example, in Connick v. Thompson, Justice Thomas wrote a 5-4 opinion that protected the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office from a civil lawsuit brought by a man who had been wrongfully convicted and spent 14 years on death row before investigators discovered that his prosecutors had failed to turn over to him a crime lab report. Justice Thomas contorted both logic and justice when he protected the cheating prosecutors from a $14 million jury verdict that had been affirmed by both lower federal courts.
On Tuesday, in Smith v. Cain, Justice Thomas was back at it again, coming to the defense of Orleans Parish and its corroded brand of justice. Only this time, the justice was unable to convince any of his colleagues to indulge the notion that judges should bend over backwards to protect cheating prosecutors. In Smith v. Cain, an 8-1 ruling authored by Chief Justice John Roberts himself, Justice Thomas spoke alone. (The difference between Connick and Smith is easy to define: The first case was about money, the second about a man's freedom).
It took the Chief Justice less than four pages to declare that the defendant's rights had been violated. Juan Smith was convicted of murder based upon the testimony of a lone witness, a man named Larry Boatner. A detective's notes, which included "statements by Boatner that conflict with his testimony identifying Smith as a perpetrator," were not turned over to Smith before his trial. This, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, violated the rule of Brady v. Maryland that requires prosecutors to turn over to the defense all potentially exculpatory information.
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More: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/for-the-prosecution-justice-clarence-thomas/251309/
Does he think he's sitting on the Supreme Court or a throne overlooking some bizarre notion of the US that only he can see?
That man and Scalia have set back American jurisprudence by decades.
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