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http://justicedenied.org/issue/issue_35/jd_issue_35.pdf
The federal Ninth Circuit ruled in Goldstein v. City of Long Beach, No. 06-55537 (9th Cir. 03/28/2007), that prosecutors can be held civilly liable for damages related to their failure to perform constitutionally required administrative obligations under Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150 (1972). Thomas Goldstein was convicted of murder in 1980 based on the testimony of a jailhouse informant. Goldstein’s trial lawyer wasn’t provided with the impeachment evidence that the informant had an extensive history of exchanging prosecution favorable testimony for a sentence reduction.
(excerpt from the opinion) :
Several years prior to Goldstein’s arrest and conviction, the Supreme Court explained that prosecutors’ offices have a constitutional obligation to establish “procedures and regulations . . . to insure communication of all relevant information on each case to every lawyer who deals with it.” Giglio, 405 U.S. at 154.
Thus, Goldstein alleges that Van De Kamp and Livesay are liable under § 1983 because, as administrators of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, they violated his constitutional rights by purposefully or with deliberate indifference failing to create a system that would satisfy this obligation.
Goldstein further alleges that Van De Kamp and Livesay violated his constitutional rights by failing to adequately train and supervise deputy district attorneys to ensure that they shared information regarding jailhouse informants with their colleagues.
If a DA can be liable for failing to properly train his staff as to the constitutional safeguards required for an accused,
then how about Nifong's apparent failure to adequately train Cline and Saacks so that they recognized the unconstitutional nature of the NTO?
Since they were acting on their own, and without input from Nifong (according to his account); and since he was responsible for their supervision, isn't he therefore civilly liable for their conduct (with no immunity, as that was an administrative duty, and not something he performed in his role as prosecutor of a specific case)?
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[21] Van De Kamp and Livesay sought dismissal of the claims against them, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), based on an assertion of absolute prosecutorial immunity. The district court denied their motion on March 8, 2006, finding that Van De Kamp and Livesay’s alleged conduct was administrative rather than prosecutorial and, therefore, not entitled to the protections of absolute immunity. …
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