John Van De Kamp, et al. v. Thomas Lee Goldstein (555 U.S. 335)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 26, 2009 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 555 U.S. 335 · 129 S. Ct. 855
- Decided
- January 26, 2009
- Term
- October Term 2008
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Civil Rights
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court. We here consider the scope of a prosecutor’s absolute immunity from claims asserted under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983. See Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U. S. 409 (1976). We ask whether that immunity extends to claims that the prosecution failed to disclose impeachment material, see Giglio v. United States, 405 U. S. 150 (1972), due to: (1) a failure properly to train prosecutors, (2) a failure properly to supervise prosecutors, or (3) a failure to establish an information system containing potential impeachment material about informants. We conclude that a prosecutor’s absolute immunity extends to all these claims. I In 1998, respondent Thomas Goldstein (then a prisoner) filed a habeas corpus action in the Federal District Court for the Central District of California. He claimed that in 1980 he was convicted of murder; that his conviction depended in critical part upon the testimony of Edward Floyd Fink, a jailhouse informant; that Fink’s testimony was unreliable, indeed false; that Fink had previously received reduced sentences for providing prosecutors with favorable testimony in other cases; that at least some prosecutors in the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office knew about the favorable treatment; that the office had not provided Gold-stein’s attorney with that information; and that, among other things, the…
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