Holy. Jeebus.
So if a DA ignores his employee's bad habit of hiding evidence to convict guys, including a particularly egregious Brady violation which requires violating law and ethics every day for 14 years under their supervision - it only counts as though it happened the one time it was caught, and obviously since it's only that one time, it was just a mixup.
IN FACT Scalia thinks it's an 'inevitability of mistakes.'
I'm not going to lay out the case, the Slate article does a good job. Instead, I'm going to get into these opinions a little bit, so pray for me - these things are corrosive to the mind and soul, and the outrage necessary to wade through them is quite exhausting.
Basically, on page 10, footnote 5, in the midst of contradicting his finding through reciting the facts of the case, Thomas draws out an incredibly ugly circlular argument (I would call it a circle-jerk, as it's just him and Scalia enjoying their little moment bashing Ginsberg together in circular fashion). He accuses Ginsberg of finding that a lack of training caused the violation before establishing deliberate indifference - then accuses her of not considering causation, which is a bizarre twist on its own - and then admits that if lack of training did actually cause the specific violation, that itself would be deliberate indifference to essential training. I shit you not.
The entire rest of his opinion holds none of Scalia's wily tricks, he just lays out facts that completely disprove his premise. For example on page 12, having earlier asserted that Connick was not on "actual or constructive notice" of a need for Brady training thus not deliberately indifferent, he cites Oklahoma City v. Tuttle "failure to train must amount to "deliberate indifference to the rights of persons with whom the [untrained employees] come into contact."
Brady IS a right of persons with whom the District Attorney employees come into contact, how is Connick's case not a perfect example of that standard? Thomas claims it's because Connick received no notice, but first of all the Bryan Cty 520 he cites specifies both 'known' (affecting notice) or 'obvious' consequence, as in the obvious consequence of prosecutors untrained in Brady violating Brady.
Furthermore: they'd done it before! In the same office! What more notice do you need?!
Here's the direct quote from page 13:
"Although Thompson does not contend that he proved a pattern of similar Brady violations, he points out that, during the ten years preceding his armed robbery trial, Louisiana courts had overturned four convictions because of Brady violations by prosecutors in Connick's office. Those four reversals could not have put Connick on notice that the office's Brady training was inadequate with respect to the sort of Brady violation at issue here. None of those cases involved failure to disclose blood evidence, a crime lab report, or physical or scientific evidence of any kind."
Again, I shit you not.
This is like the larger GOP strategy in many ways: put a bumbling sycophant out front to draw fire from the real charge - I say screw this guy, and I hope Ginsberg doesn't waste her time.
So on to Scalia, whose opinion starts on page 24, where he really poses the key question: 'whether a Brady violation presents one of those rare circumstances we hypothesized in Canton's footnote, in which the need for training in constitutional requirements is so obvious ex ante that the municipality's failure to provide that training amounts to deliberate indifference to constitutional violations.'
First of all, lets just put it out there: multiple prosecutors in the same District Attorney's office, committing a Due Process violation over the course of at least 5 years if not 14 (we'll get to that in a minute), is definitely deliberate indifference to constitutional violations.
Pages 25-28 are priceless, he thinks that requiring the District Attorney to train employees to decide 'which evidence was required by the constitution to be provided to the accused' covers 'every recurring situation in which citizen's rights can be violated.' and therefore would 'engage the federal courts in an endless exercise of second-guessing municipal employee training programs, thereby diminishing the autonomy of State and local governments.'
Of course he neglects mentioning this is THE AUTONOMY OF STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS TO SYSTEMATICALLY VIOLATE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.
Is it so much to ask that District Attorney prosecutors be trained in...um, LAW?
Apparently it is! Far too much.
Scalia explains that 'we do not have de facto respondeat superior liability...simply because the municipality does not have a professional education program covering the specific violation in sufficient depth.'
Lets jump back a little, which specific violation? The jury instructions from the District Court stated
"prosecutors would confront the situation where they would have to decide which evidence was required by the constitution to be provided to the accused."
Emphasis mine, because
WTF?! What part of the specific violation of violating
Due Process itself requires 'second-guessing' from Federal Courts? I'm not on any Court, Federal or otherwise, and I only need one guess!
Now then, page 28 comes around, and Scalia has backup arguments, of course, 'in any event' (the event his opinions are put on trial for contempt, perhaps). He says that (although this violation was completely overlooked by supervisors and 3 colleagues on the trial) it was mainly a violation by a prosecutor named Deegan, who is contended to have hidden the evidence, even from his own department.
Oh but wait! Scalia mentions that Deegan told a colleague in 1994! That's 9 years after the beginning of the cover-up, and 5 years before the evidence was finally discovered by the defense - Scalia says this is "not a failure of continuing legal education."
THESE THINGS ARE WRITTEN ON THE SAME PAGE 28. THERE ARE NOT EVEN DISTRACTING PICTURES OF KITTENS SEPARATING THESE STATEMENTS.
And that's completely ignoring that Thomas earlier brought up the previous Brady violations by the same office, I just figure if they're willing to contradict themselves on the same page they can't possibly care what's written in a whole 'nother opinion.
At one point on this amazing page, Scalia has "no reason to disbelieve that (Riehlmann's) account," because "Riehlmann kept silent about Deegan's misconduct for another 5 years, as a result of which he incurred professional sanctions."
THIS MAN HAS BEEN PURGED OF 5 YEARS OF DECEIT BY SANCTIONS AND WE CAN TRUST HIM NOW, WHEN WILL WE SEE THIS KIND OF SUCCESS IN IRAN??
Sigh.
I'm not even going to bother going through Ginsberg's, it just makes Thomas and Scalia more outrageous - for instance evidence that Connick admitted his prosecutors were "were coming fresh out of law school," acknowledged he didn't know whether they had Brady training, and acknowledged that he himself had 'stopped reading law books … and looking at opinions' when he was first elected District Attorney in 1974." And Connick also conceded that holding his underlings to the highest Brady standards would "make [his] job more difficult."
Like I said, this is really painful. Bush won't be over until his administration and their deeds are prosecuted, 'nuff said.