John Thompson vs. American Justice

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2019

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When police showed up to question John Thompson, he was worried that it was because he had sold drugs to an undercover cop. When he realized they were investigating a murder, he could only laugh: “Shit, for real? Murder?”Thompson was insistent on his innocence, but New Orleans prosecutors wanted a conviction for a high-profile murder, and they were not scrupulous about how they got it. Thompson quickly found himself on death row. Eighteen years later, just weeks before Thompson was due to be executed, his lawyers discovered that a prosecutor had hidden exculpatory evidence from the defense. Thompson had been set up. This was a violation of the Brady Rule, established by the Supreme Court, in 1963, to ensure fair trials. Ultimately, he was exonerated of both crimes, but his attempts to get a settlement from the district attorney’s office—compensation for his time in prison—were thwarted. Though an appeals court had upheld a fourteen-million-dollar settlement, the Supreme Court reversed the decision, declining to punish the D.A. for violating the Court's own ruling. Thompson’s case revealed fundamental imbalances that undermine the very notion of a fair trial. Under the Brady Rule, prosecutors must share with the defense any evidence that could be favorable to the defendant. But there is essentially no practical enforcement of this rule. In most states, prosecutors are the ones who hold the evidence and choose what to share, and disclosing exculpatory evidence makes their cases harder to win. We have absolutely no idea how many criminal trials are flawed by these violations.The staff writer Andrew Marantz, his wife, Sarah Lustbader, of the Fair Punishment Project, and the producer Katherine Wells reported on John Thompson’s story and its implications. They spoke with the late John Thompson (who died in 2017), with his lawyers, and with Harry Connick, Sr., the retired New Orleans D.A. who, despite having tried very hard to have Thompson killed, remains unrepentant. This episode contains explicit language and may not be suitable for children.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm David Remnick. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:08.3	The United States is a country founded on the rule of law.
0:11.8	Where we're innocent until proven guilty, where we have the right to a trial, with a judge acting as a referee, to make sure that everyone's playing fair.
0:20.6	Now, none of us are stupid. We all know
0:22.5	that it doesn't always happen that way, but by and large, most of us feel like the system
0:27.1	works or should work in a certain way. But what if not everyone is playing fair? What if the way
0:32.5	we define fair turns out to be not fair at all? What if the deck is stacked on every hand? Today on the
0:40.6	New Yorker Radio Hour, we're going to spend the entire show on one story, a story of crime
0:45.1	and punishment that will make you think very hard about how we do justice in this country.
0:51.4	It comes to us by way of our staff writer Andrew Morantz, and for Andrew,
0:56.1	it starts right at home.
0:57.7	So my wife, Sarah Lustbader, she's a lawyer, and for a long time she was a public defender
1:03.4	in the Bronx. And, you know, you often hear about public defenders. They're overworked. Their
1:08.2	job is so difficult, and that is all true. But another thing that she often said, you know, at the dinner table is not only is the job hard, it's like I feel like I'm fighting with one hand tied behind my back, basically. Like this does not feel like a fair fight. Actually, what I think I said to you was I have to fight my cases with one hand tied behind my back and blindfolded. I think you forgot that.
1:29.3	Yeah, okay. Objection sustained.
1:33.0	Yes, this is true. And I think it takes even defense attorneys by surprise sometimes just how imbalance the system is.
1:40.4	If you watch Law and Order or any other crime show, you imagine the two sides walk into the courtroom with the defense and the prosecution, each having the same set of facts, and they make their best case with the evidence. Is that right? Sort of? No, it's not. So let's just walk you through it, right? Let's say, for example, you, Andrew, you're charged with robbery. Someone says he came up to me, he had a weapon, he robbed me. Maybe there's evidence against you. Maybe there isn't. Maybe there's a surveillance video. The prosecution doesn't have to show you that surveillance video. Maybe they'll give you an offer at that point, drop it down to trespassing. You'd plead guilty, maybe do a couple days of community service. You're certainly not facing an armed robbery charge. Would you take that deal? But I didn't do it. I wasn't even there. Would you go to trial and face 15 years in prison for armed robbery? But I'm telling you I didn't do it. Like, do I have to?
2:35.4	What do they have on me?
2:41.3	So in theory, if the video looks really good for you, like you didn't rob anybody.
2:41.7	I didn't.
2:43.6	You'd think it would be obvious.
2:52.6	But there's actually a rule about this saying that you, prosecutor, you must turn over any evidence that's favorable to the defendant or even might show that the defendant is innocent. That rule is called Brady. It comes from a 1963 Supreme Court
	...

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