Nahmod Law

The Decision

In 2009, the Court handed down Van De Kamp v. Goldstein, 129 S. Ct. 855 (2009), a significant decision that expanded the scope of prosecutorial immunity to cover supervisory prosecutors in certain circumstances.  

Van De Kamp dealt with the applicability of prosecutorial immunity to a former district attorney and a former deputy district attorney who were sued for allegedly failing to develop policies and procedures, and failing to adequately train and supervise their subordinates, as to their constitutional obligation under Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States to ensure that information on jailhouse informants was shared among prosecutors. The plaintiff, after imprisonment for twenty-four years for murder, succeeded in obtaining habeas corpus relief and was released. Thereafter, he claimed that a jailhouse informant testified falsely at his murder trial regarding (1) the plaintiff’s supposed confession to the murder and (2) the informant’s not having received benefits in exchange for his testimony against plaintiff. He further alleged that the fact that this witness was an informant who received benefits in exchange for his testimony was never shared with the deputy district attorneys prosecuting the plaintiff. The Ninth Circuit ruled that the challenged conduct was administrative in nature and not intimately associated with the judicial phase of the criminal process. Rather, it was related only to the management of the district attorney’s office. Hence, it was not protected by prosecutorial immunity. Read the rest of this entry »