John Thompson’s case and the ruling on prosecutorial immunity

John Thompson’s case exposed the distance between overturning a wrongful conviction and obtaining accountability for the official misconduct that helped produce it. A concealed crime-lab report emerged shortly before Thompson’s scheduled execution, leading to the reversal of his conviction and death sentence and, later, his acquittal. Yet after a jury awarded him $14 million for the prosecutor’s suppression of evidence, the Supreme Court of the United States set the award aside, reinforcing a rule that left Thompson without compensation.

The Report and Thompson’s Release

Thompson was facing execution for a robbery-murder conviction when a crime-lab report was uncovered, a month before his scheduled execution. The report contradicted the State’s case against him in a crime that had taken place fourteen years earlier. The discovery transformed the case: state courts overturned both his conviction and death sentence, and Thompson was subsequently acquitted of all charges and released.

The timing sharpened the stakes of the disclosure. Evidence that challenged the State’s case had surfaced only as Thompson approached execution, after he had spent fourteen years in prison for a crime he had not committed. His release resolved the criminal case in his favor, but it did not settle the separate question of who should answer for the suppression of the report.

The Civil Verdict

Thompson brought a civil suit after his acquittal. A New Orleans jury awarded him $14 million, finding that District Attorney Harry Connick Sr. had illegally suppressed evidence of Thompson’s innocence and had allowed him to remain imprisoned for fourteen years. The verdict treated the suppressed report not as an abstract procedural defect but as evidence of official conduct with a devastating human consequence.

Connick appealed the judgment. The dispute thus moved beyond whether Thompson had been wrongfully convicted: it asked whether a prosecutor could be made financially liable for misconduct committed in a criminal case, even when that misconduct involved illegally withholding evidence of innocence.

The Supreme Court’s Reversal

In 2011, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the jury’s award in a closely divided 5–4 decision. The Court held that a prosecutor could not be held liable for misconduct in a criminal case, even if the prosecutor had intentionally and illegally withheld evidence of innocence. The ruling reversed the civil judgment without undoing Thompson’s acquittal or the courts’ earlier reversal of his conviction and death sentence.

The result drew strong criticism from scholars and observers of the Court. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a dissent, but Thompson received none of the $14 million awarded by the jury. The case therefore ended with a stark divide: the criminal proceedings had recognized that Thompson should not have been convicted, while the civil ruling denied him compensation for the misconduct the jury had found responsible for his imprisonment.

Significance and Connection to Walter McMillian’s Case

Bryan Stevenson presents Thompson’s case as a warning about the limits of remedies for wrongful convictions. In the account of Walter McMillian’s civil litigation, he notes that the Supreme Court had again strengthened the protections shielding prosecutors from accountability. Thompson’s case made that barrier concrete: even after an acquittal, a jury verdict, and a finding that the prosecutor had suppressed evidence of innocence, prosecutorial immunity prevented the award from standing.

The comparison also clarifies why a wrongful conviction can remain unresolved in important ways after release. A person may regain freedom and have the criminal judgment overturned, yet still be unable to secure redress from the officials whose conduct contributed to the injustice. Thompson’s case became a consequential example of that gap between recognition of innocence and accountability for the harm done.