Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/555/335/
Timestamp: 2019-07-17 00:25:57
Document Index: 710761839

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1983', '§1983', '§1979', '§1983', '§1983', '§1983', '§1983']

Van de Kamp v. Goldstein :: 555 U.S. 335 (2009) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 555 › Van de Kamp v. Goldstein
VAN de KAMP et al. v. GOLDSTEIN
No. 07–854. Argued November 5, 2008—Decided January 26, 2009
Respondent Goldstein was released from a California prison after he filed a successful federal habeas petition alleging that his murder conviction depended, in critical part, on the false testimony of a jailhouse informant (Fink), who had received reduced sentences for providing prosecutors with favorable testimony in other cases; that prosecutors knew, but failed to give his attorney, this potential impeachment information; and that, among other things, that failure had led to his erroneous conviction. Once released, Goldstein filed this suit under 42 U. S. C. §1983, asserting the prosecution violated its constitutional duty to communicate impeachment information, see Giglio v. United States, 405 U. S. 150, 154, due to the failure of petitioners, supervisory prosecutors, to properly train or supervise prosecutors or to establish an information system containing potential impeachment material about informants. Claiming absolute immunity, petitioners asked the District Court to dismiss the complaint, but the court declined, finding that the conduct was “administrative,” not “prosecutorial,” and hence fell outside the scope of an absolute immunity claim. The Ninth Circuit, on interlocutory appeal, affirmed.
Held: Petitioners are entitled to absolute immunity in respect to Goldstein’s supervision, training, and information-system management claims. Pp. 3–12.
(a) Prosecutors are absolutely immune from liability in §1983 suits brought against prosecutorial actions that are “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process,” Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409, 428, 430, because of “concern that harassment by unfounded litigation” could both “cause a deflection of the prosecutor’s energies from his public duties” and lead him to “shade his decisions instead of exercising the independence of judgment required by his public trust,” id., at 423. However, absolute immunity may not apply when a prosecutor is not acting as “an officer of the court,” but is instead engaged in, say, investigative or administrative tasks. Id., at 431, n. 33. To decide whether absolute immunity attaches to a particular prosecutorial activity, one must take account of Imbler’s “functional” considerations. The fact that one constitutional duty in Imbler was positive (the duty to supply “information relevant to the defense”) rather than negative (the duty not to “use … perjured testimony”) was not critical to the finding of absolute immunity. Pp. 3–6.
(b) Although Goldstein challenges administrative procedures, they are procedures that are directly connected with a trial’s conduct. A prosecutor’s error in a specific criminal trial constitutes an essential element of the plaintiff’s claim. The obligations here are thus unlike administrative duties concerning, e.g., workplace hiring. Moreover, they necessarily require legal knowledge and the exercise of related discretion, e.g., in determining what information should be included in training, supervision, or information-system management. Given these features, absolute immunity must follow. Pp. 6–12.
(1) Had Goldstein brought a suit directly attacking supervisory prosecutors’ actions related to an individual trial, instead of one involving administration, all the prosecutors would have enjoyed absolute immunity under Imbler. Their behavior, individually or separately, would have involved “[p]reparation … for … trial,” 424 U. S., at 431, n. 33, and would have been “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process,” id., at 430. The only difference between Imbler and the hypothetical, i.e., that a supervisor or colleague might be liable instead of the trial prosecutor, is not critical. Pp. 7–8.
(2) Just as supervisory prosecutors are immune in a suit directly attacking their actions in an individual trial, they are immune here. The fact that the office’s general supervision and training methods are at issue is not a critical difference for present purposes. The relevant management tasks concern how and when to make impeachment information available at trial, and, thus, are directly connected with a prosecutor’s basic trial advocacy duties. In terms of Imbler’s functional concerns, a suit claiming that a supervisor made a mistake directly related to a particular trial and one claiming that a supervisor trained and supervised inadequately seem very much alike. The type of “faulty training” claim here rests in part on a consequent error by an individual prosecutor in the midst of trial. If, as Imbler says, the threat of damages liability for such an error could lead a trial prosecutor to take account of that risk when making trial-related decisions, so, too, could the threat of more widespread liability throughout the office lead both that prosecutor and other office prosecutors to take account of such a risk. Because better training or supervision might prevent most prosecutorial errors at trial, permission to bring suit here would grant criminal defendants permission to bring claims for other trial-related training or supervisory failings. Further, such suits could “pose substantial danger of liability even to the honest prosecutor.” Imbler, 425 U. S., at 425. And defending prosecutorial decisions, often years later, could impose “unique and intolerable burdens upon a prosecutor responsible annually for hundreds of indictments and trials.” Id., at 425–426. Permitting this suit to go forward would also create practical anomalies. A trial prosecutor would remain immune for intentional misconduct, while her supervisor might be liable for negligent training or supervision. And the ease with which a plaintiff could restyle a complaint charging trial failure to one charging a training or supervision failure would eviscerate Imbler. Pp. 8–11.
(3) The differences between an information management system and training or supervision do not require a different outcome, for the critical element of any information system is the information it contains. Deciding what to include and what not to include is little different from making similar decisions regarding training, for it requires knowledge of the law. Moreover, were this claim allowed, a court would have to review the office’s legal judgments, not simply about whether to have an information system but also about what kind of system is appropriate, and whether an appropriate system would have included Giglio-related information about one particular kind of informant. Such decisions—whether made before or during trial—are “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process,” Imbler, supra, at 430, and all Imbler’s functional considerations apply. Pp. 11–12.
JOHN VAN de KAMP, et al., PETITIONERS v. THOMAS LEE GOLDSTEIN
We here consider the scope of a prosecutor’s absolute immunity from claims asserted under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. §1983. See Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409 (1976). We ask whether that immunity extends to claims that the prosecution failed to disclose impeachment material, see Giglio v. United States, 405 U. S. 150 (1972), due to: (1) a failure properly to train prosecutors, (2) a failure properly to supervise prosecutors, or (3) a failure to establish an information system containing potential impeachment material about informants. We conclude that a prosecutor’s absolute immunity extends to all these claims.
Petitioners, claiming absolute immunity from such a §1983 action, asked the District Court to dismiss the complaint. See Imbler, supra. The District Court denied the motion to dismiss on the ground that the conduct asserted amounted to “administrative,” not “prosecutorial,” conduct; hence it fell outside the scope of the prosecutor’s absolute immunity to §1983 claims. The Ninth Circuit, considering petitioners’ claim on an interlocutory appeal, affirmed the District Court’s “no immunity” determination. We now review the Ninth Circuit’s decision, and we reverse its determination.
The Court made clear that absolute immunity may not apply when a prosecutor is not acting as “an officer of the court,” but is instead engaged in other tasks, say, investigative or administrative tasks. Id., at 431, n. 33. To decide whether absolute immunity attaches to a particular kind of prosecutorial activity, one must take account of the “functional” considerations discussed above. See Burns v. Reed, 500 U. S. 478, 486 (1991) (collecting cases applying “functional approach” to immunity); Kalina v. Fletcher, 522 U. S. 118, 127, 130 (1997). In Imbler, the Court concluded that the “reasons for absolute immunity appl[ied] with full force” to the conduct at issue because it was “intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process.” 424 U. S., at 430. The fact that one constitutional duty at issue was a positive duty (the duty to supply “information relevant to the defense”) rather than a negative duty (the duty not to “use … perjured testimony”) made no difference. After all, a plaintiff can often transform a positive into a negative duty simply by reframing the pleadings; in either case, a constitutional violation is at issue. Id., at 431, n. 34.
In the years since Imbler, we have held that absolute immunity applies when a prosecutor prepares to initiate a judicial proceeding, Burns, supra, at 492, or appears in court to present evidence in support of a search warrant application, Kalina, supra, at 126. We have held that absolute immunity does not apply when a prosecutor gives advice to police during a criminal investigation, see Burns, supra, at 496, when the prosecutor makes statements to the press, Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U. S. 259, 277 (1993), or when a prosecutor acts as a complaining witness in support of a warrant application, Kalina, supra, at 132 (Scalia, J., concurring). This case, unlike these earlier cases, requires us to consider how immunity applies where a prosecutor is engaged in certain administrative activities.
Goldstein claims that the district attorney and his chief assistant violated their constitutional obligation to provide his attorney with impeachment-related information, see Giglio, 405 U. S. 150, because, as the Court of Appeals wrote, they failed “to adequately train and supervise deputy district attorneys on that subject,” 481 F. 3d, at 1176, and because, as Goldstein’s complaint adds, they “failed to create any system for the Deputy District Attorneys handling criminal cases to access information pertaining to the benefits provided to jailhouse informants and other impeachment information.” App. 45. We agree with Goldstein that, in making these claims, he attacks the office’s administrative procedures. We are also willing to assume with Goldstein, but purely for argument’s sake, that Giglio imposes certain obligations as to training, supervision, or information-system management.
The only difference we can find between Imbler and our hypothetical case lies in the fact that, in our hypothetical case, a prosecutorial supervisor or colleague might himself be liable for damages instead of the trial prosecutor. But we cannot find that difference (in the pattern of liability among prosecutors within a single office) to be critical. Decisions about indictment or trial prosecution will often involve more than one prosecutor within an office. We do not see how such differences in the pattern of liability among a group of prosecutors in a single office could alleviate Imbler’s basic fear, namely, that the threat of damages liability would affect the way in which prosecutors carried out their basic court-related tasks. Moreover, this Court has pointed out that “it is the interest in protecting the proper functioning of the office, rather than the interest in protecting its occupant, that is of primary importance.” Kalina, 522 U. S., at 125. Thus, we must assume that the prosecutors in our hypothetical suit would enjoy absolute immunity.
Once we determine that supervisory prosecutors are immune in a suit directly attacking their actions related to an individual trial, we must find they are similarly immune in the case before us. We agree with the Court of Appeals that the office’s general methods of supervision and training are at issue here, but we do not agree that that difference is critical for present purposes. That difference does not preclude an intimate connection between prosecutorial activity and the trial process. The management tasks at issue, insofar as they are relevant, concern how and when to make impeachment information available at a trial. They are thereby directly connected with the prosecutor’s basic trial advocacy duties. And, in terms of Imbler’s functional concerns, a suit charging that a supervisor made a mistake directly related to a particular trial, on the one hand, and a suit charging that a supervisor trained and supervised inadequately, on the other, would seem very much alike.
That is true, in part, for the practical reason that it will often prove difficult to draw a line between general office supervision or office training (say, related to Giglio) and specific supervision or training related to a particular case. To permit claims based upon the former is almost inevitably to permit the bringing of claims that include the latter. It is also true because one cannot easily distinguish, for immunity purposes, between claims based upon training or supervisory failures related to Giglio and similar claims related to other constitutional matters (obligations under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U. S. 83 (1963), for example). And that being so, every consideration that Imbler mentions militates in favor of immunity.
We recognize that sometimes it would be easy for a court to determine that an office’s decision about an information system was inadequate. Suppose, for example, the office had no system at all. But the same could be said of a prosecutor’s trial error. Immunity does not exist to help prosecutors in the easy case; it exists because the easy cases bring difficult cases in their wake. And, as Imbler pointed out, the likely presence of too many difficult cases threatens, not prosecutors, but the public, for the reason that it threatens to undermine the necessary independence and integrity of the prosecutorial decision-making process. Such is true of the kinds of claims before us, to all of which Imbler’s functional considerations apply. Consequently, where a §1983 plaintiff claims that a prosecutor’s management of a trial-related information system is responsible for a constitutional error at his or her particular trial, the prosecutor responsible for the system enjoys absolute immunity just as would the prosecutor who handled the particular trial itself.
555 U.S. 335