this case mr jones was denied the ability to proceed with a claim of malicious prosecutorial misconduct following of course seven circuit and supr press and this case however does present an unusual fact pattern that has not been used before this court or before the supreme court in the context  employer against packman from the supreme court can disregard stomp against sparkman i mean where do we get the authority to say well the facts here are different and so we're going to limit commented directly there are there forces a lot of languages language and implements very broad in scope well that's what we're doing i mean the court was trying it least as i read it the court was saying this like judicial immunity it's cousin this is a longstanding and broad immunity for prosecutors and we understand it comes at a certain cost but that's a cost we think you know built into the existence of the doctrine and i just i'm not sure why you think we are free to say to the supreme court well we've decided not to follow this i'm not asking you not to follow it and have him ask you your honor and i believe you have the authority to circumscribe the rule the rule of course was you know sixty years ago there's been many cases which is circumscribed the rule there's many cases that for example involve  the pretrial conduct investigatory activities other things are not considered within the advocacy role of the prosecutor i think this is another case which really involves pretrial conduct it is not the advocacy role the prosecutor in this this case if you circumscribe the rule follows more closely to the pattern of cases where the the prosecutors are not engaged  who did it you know so to speak they're making a decision which is in our system completely up to the prosecutor prosecutorial discretion is is very important what charges to file now the fact that this prosecutor and actually the deputies may have made a mistake about when you could file it under state law says nothing about immunity your honor for i beg to correct you that the case involves a malicious decision to prosecute someone specifically to add charges that they had a decades to his sentence and he had fact served more than ten years as a result of this malicious conduct so  would recognize immunity only where there's some good faith reason to believe that the charges are going to hold that that in a malicious area most dispersion in a malicious prosecution case i do believe that the immunity should only be qualified i believe that that the fact that this conduct was flagrantly illegal and remember this court counsel s a p s corpus proceeding is two sides of the same coin that the prosecutors were the ones that brought the charges the public defenders had of course been they'll fees and but but the negligence is pale in comparison to the the malicious conduct of the prosecutors who said that mr jones is not worthy he's someone who's not worthy of due process of the courts this is this really is offensive and should be offensive to the court it should be a situation and i believe the rule should be and of course and i believe the reform in the circumscription of the supreme court rules must happen in the circular courts because the district courts have no choice but to follow the precedent the circuit courts circumscribing this rule can and has every authority and every right and should adopt a rule that when prosecutors are flagrantly violating the law prosecutors langauges an investigator to conduct this judge would point out this is quintessentially prosecutorial conduct and that means there's absolute immunity and your argument against the absolute nature of absolute immunity case i recognize that the precedent that you're facing and is is overwhelmingly leading you in that direction but i believe you do have the authority to circumscribe through i believe that this is pretrial conduct pretty well established you would be on more solid ground if you were simply saying i know this is a step beyond i'm trying to preserve this argument for supreme court consideration so that nobody will say i waived it and we can conduct it is not a function of advocacy what happened is outside the scope of their role as prosecutors when they pursued illegal charges against this citizen that this citizen was all right thank you mr kraft but more in your honour's may please the court my name's there in craps and i represent the prosecutors in this case is easily resolved by several basic section one hundred and eighty three principles st the official capacity claim fails because section one hundred and eighty three dollars cannot be used to expose the state itself to liability nd the individual capacity claims fail because absolute immunity attaches to a prosecutor's actions capacity claim indiana prosecutors are arms of the state not county officials for two reasons st and most importantly a suit against a prosecutor exposes the state itself to liability because under indiana law the state has a broad obligation to defend indemnify prosecutors for their official acts nd indiana law has long classified prosecutors as state officials sovereign's power in prosecuting crimes committed against the statement again now in these general respects prosecutors are virtually identical situated to indiana's trial judges in this court held nearly thirty years ago in woods versus michigan city indiana trial judges are arms of the state not county officials it logically follows that so too are prosecutors and indeed the district courts in indiana  recognize that prosecutors are arms of the state and therefore not amenable to suits for damages in their fish capacities under section one thousand nine hundred and eighty three now jones is only argument in response is that he wants discovery to determine if the state has a lot of billy insurance with that argument is misguided for two reasons st indiana law forbids the state from acquiring insurance the nd even if it didn't these reasons jones cannot sue prosecutor cummings in his official capacity for damages now with respect to the individual capacity claims the act of filing charges or filing a motion to amend the charges is clearly a prosecutorial unity attaches even to administrative acts that directly bear on prosecutorial functions so even if mr jones had tried to assert an individual capacity claim against prosecutor cummings for adopting a policy on charging that claim to would be barred by prosecutorial munity it is the court i think observes that this court has to follow him blair and  and all the supreme court's precedents in this area now lastly even if jones could overcome what i think are these two insurmountable hurdles is claims would still fail because section one one hundred and eighty three dollars cannot be used to enforce state law or to recover damages for a violation of state law john says not come any where close to articulating an actual due process violation ledges only that the prosecutors violated state law but that is not enough importantly although the confinement charge may have been filed nine days after the omnibus they and therefore been untimely under state law that charges filed almost a year before trial so jones had ample time to prepare his  there's no due process violation for the timing of the charge were over jones has never alleged a bit of the charge was unsupported by probable cause so he can't succeed under a man well illegal conduct outside the scope of the prosecutor's legitimate function should not be so if you're to that blanket approach of call of absolute immunity that th record applied in this case again the supreme court has evolved the role of employer and it has adopted a functional approach considering a functional approach of someone as you gauge and illegal conduct as they were in this case it should not be considered to be within their function as an advocate so the court prosecutors are not judges and it's been recognized since the common law that they are quasi judicial and they're no different position than for example a public defender or other attorneys proxy before the courts they do not deserve a mistakes and non malicious and non illegal conduct all right