Opinion ID: 68091
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sufficiency of the Evidence—Culpability

Text: The Brady violation here was a failure of one or more of the four assistant district attorneys involved with Thompson’s armed robbery prosecution to turn over the crime lab report to Thompson’s counsel.41 It is undisputed that the District Attorney’s Office did not provide formal in-house training regarding Brady.42 It is also undisputed that the assistant district attorneys were familiar with the general rule of Brady that evidence favorable to the accused must be disclosed to the defense.43 Thompson’s burden was to prove that Connick, the 41 Before the § 1983 trial, the parties stipulated that the failure to produce the lab report constituted a Brady violation. As a stipulated fact, whether this actually constituted a Brady violation is not now before the court. After an extensive review of the record, this is the only Brady violation that has been proven to have occurred during Thompson’s two trials. Thompson’s counsel had access to the evidence lockup, where the physical blood evidence was clearly recorded on the evidence card kept with the evidence. And Thompson’s claims of other Brady violations during his murder trial lack merit. Some of these claimed violations were examined during Thompson’s initial appeals and this court determined that they did not constitute Brady violations. See Thompson v. Cain, 161 F.3d 802, 805-08 (5th Cir. 1998). Other claimed disclosure violations have never been adjudicated to violate Brady. Other than making conclusory assertions, Judge Prado fails to address any of these other alleged violations in his opinion, or to indicate how non-disclosure of unrelated nonBrady material is at all relevant to the need for, or Connick’s indifference to, Brady training. 42 The District Attorney’s Office stipulated to the fact that no prosecutor remembered any formalized training on their Brady responsibilities. 43 The rule of Brady was directly written into the Louisiana Code of Professional Responsibility: With respect to evidence and witnesses, the prosecutor has responsibilities different from those of a lawyer in private practice: the prosecutor should make timely disclosure to the defense of available evidence, known to him, that tends to negate the guilt of the accused, mitigate the degree of the offense, or reduce the punishment. Further, a prosecutor should not intentionally avoid pursuit of evidence merely because he believes it will damage the prosecution’s case or aid the accused. Articles of Incorporation of the La. State Bar Assoc., art. 16, EC 7-13 (1971); see also 21A LA. REV. STAT. 213 (1974). And the American Bar Association included a rule on Brady when the Model Rules of Professional Conduct were published in 1983. See MRPC R. 3.8(d) (1983) (“The prosecutor in a criminal case shall . . . make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence or information known to the prosecutor that tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates 19 No. 07-30443 policymaker for the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office, was deliberately indifferent to the need to train prosecutors in their Brady disclosure obligations. As this circuit has recently recognized, “it is not enough for [Thompson] to show that the [District Attorney’s Office’s] training program is, in a general sense, wanting.”44 Instead, “the identified deficiency in a city’s training program must be closely related to the ultimate injury.”45 The plaintiff must prove an affirmative to the question: “Would the injury have been avoided had the employee been trained under a program that was not deficient in the identified respect?”46 Every prosecutor understood his general duty under Brady, so the identified deficiency was not a failure to train on this general duty, but was instead a failure to train on how to handle specific types of evidence such as the crime lab report at issue. There was evidence that some prosecutors doubted whether Brady itself obligated the production of evidence that was not necessarily exculpatory.47 This confusion seems to have arisen because the report itself had the potential to be either exculpatory or inculpatory—depending on whether it matched Thompson’s blood type.48 Accepting that there was no training on the Brady obligations the offense . . . .”). So, in addition to being common knowledge to prosecutors, Brady was written into the ethical rules as a duty incumbent upon every prosecutor. 44 Hinojosa v. Butler, 547 F.3d 285, 297 (5th Cir. 2008). 45 City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 391. 46 Id. (emphasis added). 47 This doubt is understandable considering that no court prior to 1985 appears to have addressed the application of Brady under these circumstances. See infra note 52. The testimony, however, at trial indicated that the District Attorney’s own policy was to turn over such scientific reports, irrespective of Brady. Consequently, every prosecutor who testified stated that he would have disclosed this crime lab evidence to the defense. 48 There is no indication that the prosecutors knew Thompson’s blood type at the time of his attempted armed robbery trial. 20 No. 07-30443 pertaining to potentially exculpatory crime lab reports, we must determine whether the need for that training was “so obvious” that a reasonable jury could find that Connick was “deliberately indifferent” to that need. Thompson did not show any pattern of similar Brady violations, and instead relies exclusively on this single incident where prosecutors failed to disclose his crime lab report. In another case before this court, we sustained the district court’s conclusion that twenty-five years of records involving this District Attorney’s Office (covering the time period of Thompson’s trial) revealed no pattern of Brady violations.49 Connick testified that the District Attorney’s Office handled tens of thousands of cases annually around this time, and that in the ten years prior to Thompson’s case, only four convictions were overturned based on Brady violations, none of which was similar to the violation at issue.50 So in only a minute number of cases were convictions overturned based on Brady violations, and there was not a single instance involving the failure to disclose a crime lab report or other scientific evidence. Connick was not alerted to a need for further Brady training—especially not this specific type of Brady training—by previous violations at the District Attorney’s Office.51 Nor has Thompson been able to refer us to a single reported opinion, issued before this 1985 prosecution, from the Supreme Court, any of the circuit 49 See Cousin v. Small, 325 F.3d 627, 637 (5th Cir. 2003) (“[A] small number of cases [with violations], out of thousands handled over twenty-five years, does not create a triable issue of fact with respect to Connick’s deliberate indifference to violations of Brady rights.”). 50 According to Connick, none of these cases involved the intentional suppression of evidence. In each case, the defense was aware of the existence of the evidence and requested production. The trial court then, in each case, ruled in favor of the State. These rulings, however, were all subsequently overruled by the Louisiana Supreme Court. 51 Judge Prado would refute this evidence with testimony from Connick that it was possible that Brady violations may have occurred in other cases. Yet Thompson bore the burden of proving Connick’s deliberate indifference; showing the mere possibility that other violations may have occurred is not enough to show that Connick was put on notice that additional training was required, let alone prove that the training was obviously necessary. 21 No. 07-30443 or district courts, or any state court that involved a similar Brady violation and thus might have alerted Connick to the need for Brady training in this area.52 Thompson instead points to the following as substantial evidence that the need for training in this area was “so obvious” that a failure to train constituted deliberate indifference. First, Thompson argues that Connick testified that he knew his prosecutors would frequently come into contact with Brady evidence. Second, many prosecutors testified that the law regarding Brady contains “gray areas.” Third, Thompson noted that several of the assistant district attorneys were only a few years out of law school. Thompson also points to intra-office discussions and opinions of various assistant district attorneys from 1999 and later about whether the lab report was evidence covered by Brady. This type of evidence amounts to no more than general observations that would apply to any area of law and any number of district attorney’s offices throughout the country. All district attorneys know that Brady issues—along with many other areas of constitutional law—are routine matters that their assistants handle every day. Every district attorney knows that nearly all issues he deals with are shaded with “gray areas,” whether they concern Brady, search and seizure, Miranda, evidence of a defendant’s other crimes, expert witnesses, sentencing, or many more.53 Incorrect prosecutorial decisions in any of these areas may lead to later reversal of convictions. Nearly all district attorney’s offices employ prosecutors only a few years out of law school. That there were different opinions about Brady evidence, or any other issue that may be raised 52 The only case pointed to as similar is a Tenth Circuit case decided in 1995, a decade after Thompson’s trial, which held that physical evidence that may have had exonerating blood on it should have been disclosed. See Smith v. Sec’y of N.M. Dep’t of Corr., 50 F.3d 801 (10th Cir. 1995). This is the only case even arguably on point decided since Brady was issued in 1963. 53 While we might often wish for simple-to-apply, bright-line rules, they are the exception rather than the norm, especially within our constitutional jurisprudence. 22 No. 07-30443 among lawyers, should surprise no one. All of this evidence involves generic generalizations—not the type of exacting evidence required to show that Connick and the District Attorney’s Office were deliberately indifferent to an obvious need to further train its professional prosecutors. To the extent that this evidence could be used to show that the municipality’s training was, in a general sense, wanting, similar evidence could also support a deliberate indifference finding against any prosecutor’s office for nearly any error that leads to a reversal of a conviction. We cannot accept the argument that generalized failure to train evidence sustains a finding of official deliberate indifference. In Pineda v. City of Houston,54 Judge Higginbotham squarely rejected a plaintiff’s argument that “‘because the City has admitted that specialized training is required for officers in such situations [specialized narcotics investigations], there is sufficient evidence that the training was inadequate.’ . . . No butterfly will emerge from this hollow chrysalis of an argument.”55 Pineda relies on City of Canton, which displayed utmost caution toward generalized failure to train evidence: Neither will it suffice to prove that an injury or accident could have been avoided if an officer had had better or more training, sufficient to equip him to avoid the particular injury-causing conduct. Such a claim could be made about almost any encounter resulting in injury, yet not condemn the adequacy of the program to enable officers to respond properly to the usual and recurring situations with which they must deal. And plainly, adequately trained officers occasionally make mistakes; the fact that they do says little about the training program or the legal basis for holding the city liable.56 54 291 F.3d 325 (5th Cir. 2002). 55 Id. at 334 n.35. 56 City of Canton, 489 U.S. at 391 (emphasis added). 23 No. 07-30443 Because this case concerns the actions of licensed attorneys who have independent professional obligations to know and uphold the law, there is even more reason than in City of Canton or Pineda not to rely on generalized statements about lack of training. Training is what differentiates attorneys from average public employees. A public employer is entitled to assume that attorneys will abide by the standards of the profession, which include both ethical and practical requirements. Thus, prosecutors are personally responsible as professionals to know what Brady entails and when to perform legal research to understand the “gray areas.”57 To hold a public employer liable for failing to train professionals in their profession is an awkward theory. By analogy, it is highly unlikely that a municipality could be held liable for failing to train a doctor it employed in diagnostic nuances. Mere nostrums about training in Brady, a basic due process principle of criminal procedure, will not suffice. While Thompson has failed to produce any specific evidence relating to the obvious need for training on the identified deficiency, there is sufficient evidence to show that the need for training in this area was in fact not “so obvious.” This situation—with scientific evidence providing a blood type or other indicator of the perpetrator’s identity—occurs every time a crime lab report is prepared and blood or other scientific evidence has not been taken from the defendant. And yet Thompson failed to show any similar failures to disclose crime lab reports from this District Attorney’s Office either before his trial or since. The alleged failure to train extended over a long period of time, during which hundreds or thousands of crime lab reports were prepared. As a matter of probability, if violations were the “highly predictable consequence” of a failure to train, then we would expect to see more than just one violation in hundreds or thousands of cases. Thompson has, as a legal 57 See Cousin, 325 F.3d at 638 (“[P]rosecutors exercise independent judgment in trying a case, and they have the legal and ethical obligation to comply with Brady.”). 24 No. 07-30443 matter, failed to prove that his violation was the “highly predictable consequence” of failing to train prosecutors. This means that the need for training was not “so obvious,” and thus that Connick was not “deliberately indifferent” to Thompson’s constitutional rights.58 Indeed, three witnesses testified that the District Attorney’s Office had a policy of disclosing all crime lab reports. Dubelier testified that turning over crime lab reports was “standard operating procedure in the office.”59 Williams testified that “[y]ou have to turn over any scientific evidence that you have.” And Assistant District Attorney Val Solino testified that turning over crime lab reports was “the policy in the office.”60 While there was some confusion as to Brady obligations, every single witness who was asked stated that they would have disclosed the crime lab report had they known about it. This testimony was uncontradicted and unimpeached.61 Because the District Attorney’s Office had 58 As our court held in a similar case: “Because Burge failed to establish the existence of a single prior Brady violation, let alone demonstrate a pattern of violations sufficient to demonstrate deliberate indifference on the part of the sheriff, we find that no reasonable jury could have concluded that Sheriff Strain in his official capacity was deliberately indifferent to Burge’s right to a fair trial.” Burge, 336 F.3d at 373. 59 Dubelier testified that: “If this report was not turned over, I didn’t see it.” He stated that: “I prosecuted thousands of cases when I was a DA and turned over thousands of these types of reports. If I had the report, I would have turned it over.” Dubelier continued by stating that it was standard procedure to disclose crime lab reports: “[W]e were obligated to turn over a crime lab report. That’s the way it was. That was standard operating procedure in the office. There are, again, records, I am sure, in the office of hundreds, if maybe not more cases where I turned over these type of reports. So my practice would have been to turn over the report.” 60 Solino was the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6) representative in this case for the District Attorney’s Office. He was not employed in Connick’s office at the time of the Thompson attempted armed robbery trial. Solino testified that “I would have expected a prosecutor to turn that lab report over, period. That’s what I would have done and that’s what I would [have] expected them to have done under the policy in the office as I understood it at the time.” 61 See Reeves, 530 U.S. at 150–51. Judge Prado states that this evidence of a policy of disclosing scientific reports is contradicted by uncertainty about whether the report at issue was Brady material. But evidence of an open-file policy would not be contradicted by 25 No. 07-30443 a policy of disclosing all crime lab reports, there was no need to train on the specifics of which reports would or would not be covered by Brady. Just as a municipal policymaker could not be found deliberately indifferent to citizens’ Brady rights if the policymaker established clear policies—such as an open-file policy—to protect those rights, Connick cannot be considered “deliberately indifferent” to a Brady violation based on a failure to disclose a crime lab report when his employees generally understood that they had to disclose exactly those types of reports. For these reasons, under Monell, City of Canton, and Bryan County, the evidence in this record does not support the conclusion that Connick was deliberately indifferent to an obvious need for training. Consequently, the District Attorney cannot be held liable for the failure by his employees to disclose this crime lab report.