Harry Connick Sr.

Harry Connick Sr. appears in the book through the case of John Thompson, whose wrongful conviction led to a civil judgment against the New Orleans district attorney and then to a sharply divided Supreme Court of the United States decision. The reversal left Thompson without compensation and made Connick’s case a central example of the distance between a finding of prosecutorial misconduct and civil accountability.

Identity and Role

Connick was the district attorney in New Orleans, Louisiana, involved in the prosecution of John Thompson for a robbery-murder. The book identifies him chiefly through the later civil litigation: a jury found that he had illegally suppressed evidence of Thompson’s innocence. It does not offer a broader biography of Connick or describe his personal response to the case.

The Thompson Case and Civil Judgment

A month before Thompson was scheduled to be executed, a crime-lab report was uncovered that contradicted the State’s case against him. His conviction and death sentence were overturned by state courts, and he was later acquitted of all charges and released. Thompson then brought a civil suit over the years he had spent in prison for a crime he had not committed.

A New Orleans jury awarded Thompson $14 million. The jury found that Connick had illegally suppressed evidence of Thompson’s innocence and had allowed him to spend fourteen years in prison. The judgment translated the jury’s finding into a substantial award, but it did not survive appeal.

Supreme Court Ruling and Significance

Connick appealed, and the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the award in a 5–4 decision. The Court held that a prosecutor could not be held liable for misconduct in a criminal case even when the prosecutor had intentionally and illegally withheld evidence of innocence. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissent, and the decision drew strong criticism from scholars and observers of the Court.

Thompson received no money from the verdict. In the book’s account, Connick’s case demonstrates how prosecutorial immunity can block civil accountability even after an innocent person’s conviction has been overturned and a jury has found that the district attorney suppressed exculpatory evidence. The legal reversal thus did not undo Thompson’s acquittal, but it deprived him of the compensation the jury had awarded.