"Uncle" Clarence Thomas Rips $20MM away from Freed Death Row Brother

[muckraker10021]

U.S. Supreme Court Sides with Orleans Parish
DA in Appeal of $14 million Judgment

Justice Clarence Thomas Writes Majority Opinion
Denying Exonerated Man Financial Compensation

March 29, 2011

by Gordon Russell and Laura Maggi

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/03/us_supreme_court_sides_with_or.html#incart_hbx


In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro, who contended that his office should not have to pay a $14 million judgment awarded to former death row inmate John Thompson, who was wrongfully convicted of murder when prosecutors withheld evidence.

At a news conference with Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, Cannizzaro said the opinion "removes a dark cloud of uncertainty that was hanging over the district attorney's office when I arrived here in 2008."

Cannizzaro noted that the judgment, which he estimated had grown to about $20 million with interest over the past four years, would have effectively shuttered the DA's office.

The court's opinion was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, who was joined by John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. At issue was whether the DA's office could be held liable for the actions of a couple of prosecutors who admittedly hid some blood evidence favorable to Thompson in an armed robbery case before taking him to trial for the 1984 murder of hotel executive Ray Liuzza during an Uptown stickup.


Prosecutors typically enjoy immunity from such lawsuits, but a jury in 2007 sided with Thompson, who sued the DA's office for railroading him into death row via the purposely bungled robbery case. Then-District Attorney Eddie Jordan defended the civil case in federal court, but the Thompson prosecution was overseen by longtime Orleans Parish DA Harry Connick.

The decision by Thomas concluded that the DA's office could not be held responsible for failing to train prosecutors about their obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence based on a single case. It means that Thompson will not collect his award.

"I'm not worried about their money. I want them to be held accountable.'' Thompson said today in a news conference.

"I had sons who grew up without a father, who thought their father was a killer.''

He said that he disagreed with the decision, but he felt like his fight has just begun. He said he has received a two-year grant to examine accountability in the justice system.

He said he he hopes that Cannizzaro will not just turn his back on the case but will recognize the wrongdoing in his predecessor's office and "reconsider some innocent cases coming back his way.''

Cannizzaro described the failure to turn over the evidence from the robbery case the "unethical actions of a rogue prosecutor." His office provides guidance to prosecutors about their obligations to turn over evidence favorable to defendants, as well as providing training.

"I train my assistant district attorneys to fight hard for the citizens of this community," Cannizzaro said. "But I demand of them that they fight fair."

Until the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal -- which it does in only about 1 percent of cases -- the DA's office remained the underdog in the legal fight. It failed twice to persuade the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the $14 million award, which has been growing with interest since 2007 and doesn't include about $1 million in lawyers' fees.

In August 2009, the full 5th Circuit -- in a rare split decision of 8-8 -- upheld the judgment and an earlier decision by a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court.

Of the 16 federal judges, eight held that the jury had already spoken after hearing the facts, while the dissenters said it is an outrageous burden to hold a district attorney's office accountable for employees' misdeeds.

Before the jury trial in 2007, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ruled that Thompson did not need to show jurors there was a pattern of withholding exculpatory evidence at the Orleans Parish DA's office. Instead, the jury could find that the district attorney's office was "deliberately indifferent" to the need for training on this issue with just the one example.

Barbier's findings relied on an earlier Supreme Court decision that found that a police department, for example, could be found to be deliberately indifferent to needed training if they sent out officers to apprehend felons without the necessary knowledge about when they can use deadly force.

But in his opinion, Thomas wrote that prosecutors, who must be licensed attorneys, are a different kind of public employee than police officers, who without proper training might not have any idea about the legal restrictions on use of force. Instead, lawyers are educated and have an obligation, under state legal regulations, to know about their ethical obligations, Thomas noted.

The dissent, which was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, concluded that the failure to turn over the blood evidence by prosecutors was "neither isolated nor atypical" of the DA's office at the time of Thompson's trial.

Ginsburg wrote that the trial record is rife with improper conduct by prosecutors, which hampered Thompson's ability to defend himself. Prosecutors not only should have turned over the blood evidence in the robbery trial, but also should have provided defense attorneys with police reports that contained witness statements that could have helped Thompson, she wrote.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan joined Ginsburg in her dissent.



.

 

[Cruise]

Clarence Thomas...

an American scumbag.

Clarence, Condoleeza, & Colin, why oh why did they have to be black?

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Just amazing.

 

[muckraker10021]

Cruel but Not Unusual
Clarence Thomas writes one of the meanest Supreme Court decisions ever

by Dahlia Lithwick

April 1, 2011

http://www.slate.com/id/2290036

In 1985, John Thompson was convicted of murder in Louisiana. Having already been convicted in a separate armed robbery case, he opted not to testify on his own behalf in his murder trial. He was sentenced to death and spent 18 years in prison—14 of them isolated on death row—and watched as seven executions were planned for him. Several weeks before an execution scheduled for May 1999, Thompson's private investigators learned that prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence that would have cleared him at his robbery trial. This evidence included the fact that the main informant against him had received a reward from the victim's family, that the eyewitness identification done at the time described someone who looked nothing like him, and that a blood sample taken from the crime scene did not match Thompson's blood type.

In 1963, in Brady v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must turn over to the defense any evidence that would tend to prove a defendant's innocence. Failure to do so is a violation of the defendant's constitutional rights. Yet the four prosecutors in Thompson's case managed to keep secret the fact that they had hidden exculpatory evidence for 20 years. Were it not for Thompson's investigators, he would have been executed for a murder he did not commit.

Both of Thompson's convictions were overturned. When he was retried on the murder charges, a jury acquitted him after 35 minutes. He sued the former Louisiana district attorney for Orleans Parish, Harry Connick Sr. (yes, his dad) for failing to train his prosecutors about their legal obligation to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. A jury awarded Thompson $14 million for this civil rights violation, one for every year he spent wrongfully incarcerated. The district court judge added another $1 million in attorneys' fees. A panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the verdict. An equally divided 5th Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed again.

But this week, writing on behalf of the five conservatives on the Supreme Court and in his first majority opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas tossed out the verdict, finding that the district attorney can't be responsible for the single act of a lone prosecutor. The Thomas opinion is an extraordinary piece of workmanship, matched only by Justice Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion, in which he takes a few extra whacks at Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent. (Ginsburg was so bothered by the majority decision that she read her dissent from the bench for the first time this term.) Both Thomas and Scalia have produced what can only be described as a master class in human apathy. Their disregard for the facts of Thompson's thrashed life and near-death emerges as a moral flat line. Scalia opens his concurrence with a swipe at Ginsburg's "lengthy excavation of the trial record" and states that "the question presented for our review is whether a municipality is liable for a single Brady violation by one of its prosecutors." But only by willfully ignoring that entire trial record can he and Thomas reduce the entire constitutional question to a single misdeed by a single bad actor.

Both parties to this case have long agreed that an injustice had been done. Connick himself conceded that there had been a Brady violation, yet Scalia finds none. Everyone else concedes that egregious mistakes were made. Scalia struggles to rehabilitate them all.

One of the reasons the truth came to light after 20 years is that Gerry Deegan, a junior assistant D.A. on the Thompson case, confessed as he lay dying of cancer that he had withheld the crime lab test results and removed a blood sample from the evidence room. The prosecutor to whom Deegan confessed said nothing about this for five years.

While Scalia pins the wrongdoing on a single "miscreant prosecutor," Ginsburg correctly notes that "no fewer than five prosecutors" were involved in railroading Thompson. She adds that they "did so despite multiple opportunities, spanning nearly two decades, to set the record straight." While Thomas states the question as having to do with a "single Brady violation," Ginsburg is quick to point out that there was far more than just a misplaced blood sample at issue: Thompson was turned in by someone seeking a reward, but prosecutors failed to turn over tapes of that conversation. The eyewitness identification of the killer didn't match Thompson, but was never shared with defense counsel. The blood evidence was enough to prove a Brady violation, but it was the tip of the iceberg.

In the 10 years preceding Thompson's trial, Thomas acknowledges, "Louisiana courts had overturned four convictions because of Brady violations by prosecutors in Connick's office." Yet somehow this doesn't add up to a pattern of Brady violations in the office, because the evidence in those other cases wasn't blood or crime lab evidence. Huh? He then inexplicably asserts that young prosecutors needn't be trained on Brady violations because they learned everything in law school.

Scalia and Thomas are at pains to say that Connick was not aware of or responsible for his subordinates' unconstitutional conduct, except—as Ginsburg points out—that Connick acknowledged that he misunderstood Brady, acknowledged that his prosecutors "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." As Bennett Gershman and Joel Cohen point out, the jury had "considerable evidence that both Connick and prosecutors in his office were ignorant of the constitutional rules regarding disclosure of exculpatory evidence; they were ignorant of the rules regarding disclosure of scientific evidence; there was no training, or continuing education, and no procedures to monitor compliance with evidentiary requirements; prosecutors did not review police files; and shockingly, Connick himself had been indicted by federal prosecutors for suppressing a lab report of the kind hidden from Thompson."

It's not just that a jury, a judge, and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found that Connick knew his staff was undertrained and he failed to fix it. It's that it's almost impossible, on reviewing all of the evidence, to conclude anything else. Nobody is suggesting that the legal issue here is simple or that there aren't meaningful consequences to creating liability for district attorneys who fail to train their subordinates in Brady compliance. But those aren't the opinions that Thomas and Scalia produced. Their effort instead was to sift and resift the facts until the injury done to Thompson can be pinned on a single bad actor, acting in bad faith. It's a long, sad, uphill trek.

Beyond that, there is no suggestion in either opinion that this is a hard question or a close call or even a hint of regret at their conclusion. There is only certainty that the jury, the appeals court, and above all Ginsburg got it completely wrong in believing that someone should be held responsible for the outrages suffered by John Thompson. If there is empathy for anyone in evidence here, it's for the overworked and overzealous district attorneys.

It's left to Ginsburg to acknowledge that the costs of immunizing Connick from any wrongdoing is as high as the cost of opening him to it: "The prosecutorial concealment Thompson encountered … is bound to be repeated unless municipal agencies bear responsibility—made tangible by §1983 liability—for adequately conveying what Brady requires and for monitoring staff compliance." As Scott Lemieux points out, by all-but-immunizing Connick for the conduct of his subordinates, the court has created a perfect Catch-22, since the courts already give prosecutors absolute immunity for their actions as prosecutors (though they may still be liable for their conduct as administrators or investigators). By immunizing their bosses as well, the court has guaranteed that nobody can be held responsible for even the most shocking civil rights violations.

I don't think that the failure at the court is one of empathy. I don't ask that Thomas or Scalia shed a tear for an innocent man who almost went to his death because of deceptive prosecutors. And, frankly, Ginsburg's dissent—while powerful—is no less Vulcan in tone than their opinions. But this case is of a piece with prior decisions in which Thomas and Scalia have staked out positions that revel in the hyper-technical and deliberately callous. It was, after all, Scalia who wrote in 2009 that "this court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent." It was Thomas who wrote that a prisoner who was slammed to a concrete floor and punched and kicked by a guard after asking for a grievance form had no constitutional claim.

The law awards no extra points for being pitiless and scornful. There is rarely a reason to be pitiless and scornful, certainly in a case of an innocent man who was nearly executed. It leads one to wonder whether Thomas and Scalia sometimes are just because they can be.

 

[muckraker10021]

The Prosecution Rests, but I Can’t

by John Thompson

April 9th, 2011


I SPENT 18 years in prison for robbery and murder, 14 of them on death row. I’ve been free since 2003, exonerated after evidence covered up by prosecutors surfaced just weeks before my execution date. Those prosecutors were never punished. Last month, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to overturn a case I’d won against them and the district attorney who oversaw my case, ruling that they were not liable for the failure to turn over that evidence — which included proof that blood at the robbery scene wasn’t mine.

Because of that, prosecutors are free to do the same thing to someone else today.

I was arrested in January 1985 in New Orleans. I remember the police coming to my grandmother’s house — we all knew it was the cops because of how hard they banged on the door before kicking it in. My grandmother and my mom were there, along with my little brother and sister, my two sons — John Jr., 4, and Dedric, 6 — my girlfriend and me. The officers had guns drawn and were yelling. I guess they thought they were coming for a murderer. All the children were scared and crying. I was 22.

They took me to the homicide division, and played a cassette tape on which a man I knew named Kevin Freeman accused me of shooting a man. He had also been arrested as a suspect in the murder. A few weeks earlier he had sold me a ring and a gun; it turned out that the ring belonged to the victim and the gun was the murder weapon.

My picture was on the news, and a man called in to report that I looked like someone who had recently tried to rob his children. Suddenly I was accused of that crime, too. I was tried for the robbery first. My lawyers never knew there was blood evidence at the scene, and I was convicted based on the victims’ identification.

After that, my lawyers thought it was best if I didn’t testify at the murder trial. So I never defended myself, or got to explain that I got the ring and the gun from Kevin Freeman. And now that I officially had a history of violent crime because of the robbery conviction, the prosecutors used it to get the death penalty.

I remember the judge telling the courtroom the number of volts of electricity they would put into my body. If the first attempt didn’t kill me, he said, they’d put more volts in.

On Sept. 1, 1987, I arrived on death row in the Louisiana State Penitentiary — the infamous Angola prison. I was put in a dead man’s cell. His things were still there; he had been executed only a few days before. That past summer they had executed eight men at Angola. I received my first execution date right before I arrived. I would end up knowing 12 men who were executed there.

Over the years, I was given six execution dates, but all of them were delayed until finally my appeals were exhausted. The seventh — and last — date was set for May 20, 1999. My lawyers had been with me for 11 years by then; they flew in from Philadelphia to give me the news. They didn’t want me to hear it from the prison officials. They said it would take a miracle to avoid this execution. I told them it was fine — I was innocent, but it was time to give up.

But then I remembered something about May 20. I had just finished reading a letter from my younger son about how he wanted to go on his senior class trip. I’d been thinking about how I could find a way to pay for it by selling my typewriter and radio. “Oh, no, hold on,” I said, “that’s the day before John Jr. is graduating from high school.” I begged them to get it delayed; I knew it would hurt him.

To make things worse, the next day, when John Jr. was at school, his teacher read the whole class an article from the newspaper about my execution. She didn’t know I was John Jr.’s dad; she was just trying to teach them a lesson about making bad choices. So he learned that his father was going to be killed from his teacher, reading the newspaper aloud. I panicked. I needed to talk to him, reassure him.

Amazingly, I got a miracle. The same day that my lawyers visited, an investigator they had hired to look through the evidence one last time found, on some forgotten microfiche, a report sent to the prosecutors on the blood type of the perpetrator of the armed robbery. It didn’t match mine; the report, hidden for 15 years, had never been turned over to my lawyers. The investigator later found the names of witnesses and police reports from the murder case that hadn’t been turned over either.

As a result, the armed robbery conviction was thrown out in 1999, and I was taken off death row. Then, in 2002, my murder conviction was thrown out. At a retrial the following year, the jury took only 35 minutes to acquit me.

The prosecutors involved in my two cases, from the office of the Orleans Parish district attorney, Harry Connick Sr., helped to cover up 10 separate pieces of evidence. And most of them are still able to practice law today.

Why weren’t they punished for what they did? When the hidden evidence first surfaced, Mr. Connick announced that his office would hold a grand jury investigation. But once it became clear how many people had been involved, he called it off.

In 2005, I sued the prosecutors and the district attorney’s office for what they did to me. The jurors heard testimony from the special prosecutor who had been assigned by Mr. Connick’s office to the canceled investigation, who told them, “We should have indicted these guys, but they didn’t and it was wrong.” The jury awarded me $14 million in damages — $1 million for every year on death row — which would have been paid by the district attorney’s office. That jury verdict is what the Supreme Court has just overturned.

I don’t care about the money. I just want to know why the prosecutors who hid evidence, sent me to prison for something I didn’t do and nearly had me killed are not in jail themselves. There were no ethics charges against them, no criminal charges, no one was fired and now, according to the Supreme Court, no one can be sued.

Worst of all, I wasn’t the only person they played dirty with. Of the six men one of my prosecutors got sentenced to death, five eventually had their convictions reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct. Because we were sentenced to death, the courts had to appoint us lawyers to fight our appeals. I was lucky, and got lawyers who went to extraordinary lengths. But there are more than 4,000 people serving life without parole in Louisiana, almost none of whom have lawyers after their convictions are final. Someone needs to look at those cases to see how many others might be innocent.

If a private investigator hired by a generous law firm hadn’t found the blood evidence, I’d be dead today. No doubt about it.

A crime was definitely committed in this case, but not by me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/opinion/10thompson.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=all

 

[GET YOU HOT]

Disgraceful Clarence Thomas, may have problems of his own, dealing with special interests...

Conflict of Interest: Clarence Thomas’ Koch Brothers story doesn’t add up
FEBRUARY 14, 2011 · POSTED IN BREAKING NEWS, NEWS AND CURRENT AFFAIRS, PEOPLE, POLITICAL NEWS, POLITICS, THE SUPREME COURT 


Clarence Thomas doesn’t talk — at least not during Supreme Court oral arguments. But a speech he appears to have given at an event hosted by the [B]Koch brothers, the anti-Social Security, anti Clean Air Act, libertarian oil and paper magnates who have become key sponsors of tea party conservative groups  – and conflicting statements he gave about it — may soon cause him some headaches. [/B]Breaking overnight on the New York Times website (with a hat tip to Rachel Maddow, who reported on it in the closing minutes of her show on MSNBC…) as written up by investigative reporter Eric Lichtblau:
WASHINGTON — Discrepancies in reports about an appearance by Justice Clarence Thomas at a political retreat for wealthy conservatives three years ago have prompted new questions to the Supreme Court from a group that advocates changing campaign finance laws.
When questions were first raised about the retreat last month, a court spokeswoman said Justice Thomas had made a “brief drop-by” at the event in Palm Springs, Calif., in January 2008 and had given a talk.
In his financial disclosure report for that year, however, Justice Thomas reported that the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group, had reimbursed him an undisclosed amount for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” over the weekend of the retreat. The event is organized by Charles and David Koch, brothers who have used millions of dollars from the energy conglomerate they run in Wichita, Kan., to finance conservative causes.
Arn Pearson, a vice president at the advocacy group Common Cause, said the two statements appeared at odds. His group sent a letter to the Supreme Court on Monday asking for “further clarification” as to whether the justice spent four days at the retreat for the entire event or was there only briefly.
“I don’t think the explanation they’ve given is credible,” Mr. Pearson said in an interview. He said that if Justice Thomas’s visit was a “four-day, all-expenses paid trip in sunny Palm Springs,” it should have been reported as a gift under federal law. …
It’s no small question. Common Cause had already been asserting that Thomas and Antonin Scalia should have recused themselves from the Citizens United case, which clearly benefited the Koch Brothers (the financiers of some of the biggest 2010 election efforts to elect Republicans, underwriters of the partisan/Republican tea party movement, and hosts of numerous retreats for conservative Republican politicians.
This from just last month, via a site called “No Corporate Rule” (channeling Common Cause):
This past weekend, at the exclusive Rancho Las Palmas resort near Palm Springs, California, the infamous Koch brothers hosted a gala for some of the largest titans of industry and government; the influential and the moneyed. It wasn’t necessarily a celebratory gathering to praise and applaud those who participated in a hard-fought election, but rather a secretive planning and strategizing session for the prominent conservative elected (and un-elected) officials, donors and strategists that have been shaping American political thought and policy the last few years. The twice-a-year gathering has been framed as a session “to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it.”
It’s not known whether two Supreme Court justices, namely Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were attending the Rancho Las Palmas festivities, but it is known that both have had dealings with David and Charles Koch in the past and have been guests of the notorious pair at similar occasions. This has raised red-flags, appropriately so, by legal ethicists and other groups who want to see more disclosure. Although supreme court justices are not barred, like federal judges, from appearing at partisan events, they are ethically-bound from attending overt political planning functions. Obviously, their presence at these conferences greatly raises questions of transparency and, for some, broader concerns about judicial independence.
Last spring, in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and signed by Common Cause President & CEO Bob Edgar and Vice President Arn Pearson, they asked that the Justice Department promptly investigate whether Justices Thomas and Scalia should have recused themselves from the Citizens United case. If the Department finds sufficient grounds for disqualification of either Justice, they have requested that the Solicitor General file a motion with the full Supreme Court seeking to vacate the judgment.
Although sufficient evidence may be unattainable, questions included in the petition include: (1) Would a reasonable person question the impartiality of Justices Thomas and Scalia based on their attendance at secretive Koch Industries retreats?, and (2) Does attendance of a closed-door Koch Industries retreat constitute political activity? Common Cause argues, “We believe it is inappropriate for a Supreme Court judge to be ‘featured’ at or attend closed-door strategy meetings with political donors, corporate CEOs, candidates and political officials, and thereby lend the prestige of their position to the political goals of that event” and “A reasonable person would question the impartiality of Justices Thomas and Scalia in the Citizens United case based on their attendance at political strategy meetings sponsored by a corporation that raises and spends millions to defeat Democrats and elect Republicans”.
And there’s another fly in the ointment that may add credence to Common Cause’s request: As you can probably imagine (simply because you undoubtedly consider yourself a “reasonable person”), federal judges — and justices — are required by law to disclose their spouse’s income. This prohibits unsavory organizations and individuals from influencing the judiciary by channeling money (i.e., “influence”) through their wife or husband. Yet, Justice Thomas has not complied with this requirement for years. Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, Justice Thomas’ wife, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation’s IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled “none” where “spousal noninvestment income” would be disclosed. It’s also known that Virginia Thomas has been active in the political group, Liberty Central, an organization of her founding, that’s predominately guided by the Tea Party’s vague philosophies of limited government, free enterprise, national security, and personal responsibility, and is also funded charitably by Koch Industries, the second largest private corporation in America.
Thus, the Common Cause petition to the Department of Justice also asked a third very critical question: Did Justice Thomas have a conflict of interest based on his wife’s interest in the subject matter of the Citizens United case? If so, and this is an equally important question to ask (again, assuming you’re a “reasonable person”): Does Koch Industries’ ties to Virginia Thomas’ organization, Liberty Central, create an additional appearance of bias for Justice Thomas?
And this from Common Cause itself, which raises the question of whether Thomas’ failure to disclose his and his wife’s ties to interests who stood to benefit from Citizens United could merit something beyond recusal:
In mid-January, as we looked into Justice Scalia’s and Justice Thomas’ attendance at private political strategy and fundraising meetings hosted by Koch Industries, a Common Cause legal fellow discovered a startling omission from Justice Thomas’ annual financial disclosure forms.
Though the employment and political activism of the justice’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, was no secret, the justice had failed to report her work on Capitol Hill for then-Rep. Dick Armey in the mid-1990s, for the Heritage Foundation from 1998-2007, and for Hillsdale College in 2008.
Like other federal officials, justices are required to report the sources of “non-investment” income earned each year by their spouses. It’s the law, part of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, and it seems clear that Justice Thomas was in violation.
We reported the situation to the U.S. Judicial Conference, the agency that collects judicial disclosure forms, and within hours Justice Thomas filed amended forms noting his wife’s employment. His omissions, stretching over 20 years, were inadvertent, the justice explained.
The Ethics Act carries both civil and criminal penalties for anyone who “knowingly and willfully falsifies” or fails to file a disclosure report. The maximum penalty is a $50,000 fine and one year in prison.
So, should Justice Thomas be prosecuted? And if the answer is yes, can he be prosecuted – given that he holds a lifetime appointment and can be removed from office only through impeachment?
Thomas certainly could be prosecuted, even while remaining on the bench. In the early 1990s, Alcee Hastings Jr., a federal district judge in Florida, was indicted by a grand jury and tried on bribery charges. He stayed in office through his trial and was acquitted by a jury, then was impeached by the House and removed from office by the Senate. Hastings ultimately turned to politics and won election to the House in 1992; he is still serving there.
Whether Thomas should be prosecuted is a question first for the Judicial Conference, the agency that collects the disclosure forms, and then for the attorney general. The Ethics Act says if the conference determines that disclosure errors or omissions were knowing and willful, it can refer them to the attorney general for prosecution.
Already, 74 House Democrats have written a letter asking Thomas to recuse himself from any deliberations on healthcare reform, because of Ginny Thomas’ tea party advocacy against the bill.
But these new revelations appear to indicate that Thomas is not just staring right down the gullet of multiple conflicts of interest, he may have also lied about it.
I think it’s time for Clarence to talk.
Related posts:
Open Salon: A Citizens United conspiracy, complete with two Supremes
TRR: Belle of the ball: Koch brother, lobbyists, fete the new House majority
TRR: A stain on the court? Scalia and Thomas’ secret meeting with KochPac raises ethical questions
TRR: The list, the Koch brothers, and the ‘planning’ of the midterm elections
TRR: Clarence Thomas’ wife, the tea party, and Citizens United
Tags: Antonin Scalia, Citizens United, Clarence Thomas, the Koch brothers, the Kochtocracy, The Supreme Court
COMMENTS
5 Responses to “Conflict of Interest: Clarence Thomas’ Koch Brothers story doesn’t add up”
TWEETS THAT MENTION CONFLICT OF INTEREST: CLARENCE THOMAS’ KOCH BROTHERS STORY DOESN’T ADD UP : THE REID REPORT -- TOPSY.COM ON FEBRUARY 14TH, 2011 11:00 PM
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ASW, Redacted, No Longer!, Gail Leach, 25th Century Girl, Joy Reid and others. Joy Reid said: Conflict of Interest: Clarence Thomas’ Koch Brothers story doesn’t add up… http://************/6g8xv2p H/T @maddow #SCOTUS #kochtocracy [...]
	 JOE4MORE ON FEBRUARY 14TH, 2011 11:58 PM
This is getting ridicules; in addition to the conservative “activist” judges, we got the Frank Luntz/Fox focus groups testing talking points for the Republican party.
Two questions: Who is watching the Supreme Court? Does Fox News have to restructure itself as FOXpac?
SHOULD JUSTICE THOMAS RECUSE HIMSELF ON ANY HEALTH CARE LAW CASES? - PAGE 7 - FLYERTALK FORUMS ON FEBRUARY 15TH, 2011 6:38 PM
[...] dollars from the energy conglomerate they run in Wichita, Kan., to finance conservative causes. http://blog.reidreport.com/2011/02/c…doesnt-add-up/ Instead of recusing himself, why doesn't he just resign? __________________ Eamus Catuli [...]
	 BARBARA DANDRIDGE ON FEBRUARY 21ST, 2011 11:52 AM
Not only should Justice Thomas recuse himself on any health care law cases, he should also be indicted and convicted and impeached and removed from office along with Justice Scalia!
CLARENCE THOMAS FACES DISBARMENT COMPLAINT IN MISSOURI : THE REID REPORT ON MARCH 3RD, 2011 2:40 PM

 

[QueEx]

In a not so strange way, this is really a case about voting.

We have here a terrible injustice done not only to Mr. Thompson, but his family as suffered tremendously, as well.

We have here unscrupulous prosecutors systematically violating the law.

We have here a Supreme Court divided over right.

And it all largely boils down to too many of us not exercising our responsibility to VOTE.

To whom here does this not make sense ???

QueEx

 

[Mrfreddygoodbud]

disgusting, fucking bush apointee...... bush sr is going to come back in his next life as an albino earthworm.. clarence uncle thomas is just going to be a donkey..

this is just utterly and absolutely disgusting..... he will win though, mark my words he willl get all that and interest..

stupid law, if you get caught in a stolen car, even though you aint steal it, what happens.. you are guilty by association right...

whats the fuckin difference, there are no such things as laws in this country, only rules that favor the wealthy white parasitic one percent....

all those judges mentioned should be sent to solitary confinement for he rest of their lives...

 

[TEN]

smh

 

[CT_POPPA]

probably will live to see 100

 

[Cruise]

In a not so strange way, this is really a case about voting.

We have here a terrible injustice done not only to Mr. Thompson, but his family as suffered tremendously, as well.

We have here unscrupulous prosecutors systematically violating the law.

We have here a Supreme Court divided over right.

And it all largely boils down to too many of us not exercising our responsibility to VOTE.

To whom here does this not make sense ???

QueEx

You see this as an issue of voting?

Voting is a jerk-off.

If you want real results, let every black person in New Orleans pull every dime out the bank until this is fixed. Or, let them all boycott Walmart. Or, let them picket high-end stores downtown. Or, let them decide not to pay any traffic costs and drag everything out to trial every time they get a ticket or go to court.

You'll see some changes real quick.

Voting is a waste.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

You see this as an issue of voting?

Voting is a jerk-off.

If you want real results, let every black person in New Orleans pull every dime out the bank until this is fixed. Or, let them all boycott Walmart. Or, let them picket high-end stores downtown. Or, let them decide not to pay any traffic costs and drag everything out to trial every time they get a ticket or go to court.

You'll see some changes real quick.

Voting is a waste.

Voting goes with the economic strategy. As I've noted many times, the groups that get the most out of our system are the elderly and the rich: two groups that participate with their votes and their money. Doing one without the other gets no more than short term victories.

 

[QueEx]

You see this as an issue of voting?

Voting is a jerk-off.

If you want real results, let every black person in New Orleans pull every dime out the bank until this is fixed. Or, let them all boycott Walmart. Or, let them picket high-end stores downtown. Or, let them decide not to pay any traffic costs and drag everything out to trial every time they get a ticket or go to court.

You'll see some changes real quick.

Voting is a waste.

Of course, I wouldn't have expected an anarchist to support the idea of voting. Nevertheless, if people, especially "our" people, would get out and stay out to vote; the Supreme Court wouldn't be stacked as it is -- and likely will be into the future -- and Uncle Clarence's opinion wouldn't have mattered.

But, let me understand better how boycotting Walmart in New Orleans will change the ruling of the Supreme Court. I can see how that will get a lot of people laid off; people that look just like John Thompson -- but how will that change the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ???

BTW, if you can get people out, en masse, to boycott Walmart, why not have a boycott, every election day ?



QueEx

 

[Cruise]

Of course, I wouldn't have expected an anarchist to support the idea of voting. Nevertheless, if people, especially "our" people, would get out and stay out to vote; the Supreme Court wouldn't be stacked as it is -- and likely will be into the future -- and Uncle Clarence's opinion wouldn't have mattered.

But, let me understand better how boycotting Walmart in New Orleans will change the ruling of the Supreme Court. I can see how that will get a lot of people laid off; people that look just like John Thompson -- but how will that change the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court ???

BTW, if you can get people out, en masse, to boycott Walmart, why not have a boycott, every election day ?



QueEx

I don't like voting because

1) it condones all actions of the State
2) it reduces the feeling of responsibility by the people
3) it conditions the population to accept ONLY the choices on the ballot
4) it reduces the rights of those in the minority
5) it creates a false sense of security that gives people an excuse not to take a stand

The Civil Rights struggle has shown what works. Revolutions, marches, pickets, boycotts, armed defense, civil disobedience, protests, and other active defiance is what gets results... and FAST!

Voting is a waste of time without it.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

I don't like voting because

1) it condones all actions of the State
2) it reduces the feeling of responsibility by the people
3) it conditions the population to accept ONLY the choices on the ballot
4) it reduces the rights of those in the minority
5) it creates a false sense of security that gives people an excuse not to take a stand

The Civil Rights struggle has shown what works. Revolutions, marches, pickets, boycotts, armed defense, civil disobedience, protests, and other active defiance is what gets results... and FAST!

Voting is a waste of time without it.

As opposed to what? How does not voting help secure the rights of the minority?

The Civil Rights struggle was about political and economic equity. You may get some quick, short term results but without participation at the ballot, those results probably won't last your own lifetime.

 

[QueEx]

I don't like voting because

1) it condones all actions of the State
2) it reduces the feeling of responsibility by the people
3) it conditions the population to accept ONLY the choices on the ballot
4) it reduces the rights of those in the minority
5) it creates a false sense of security that gives people an excuse not to take a stand

The Civil Rights struggle has shown what works. Revolutions, marches, pickets, boycotts, armed defense, civil disobedience, protests, and other active defiance is what gets results... and FAST!

Voting is a waste of time without it.

Yada, yada, yada.

How will boycotting Walmart change the result reached by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Thompson case ??? I'd like to see, realistically, how that happens -- before I just dismiss as nonsense what you've said above.

QueEx

 

[Cruise]

Yada, yada, yada.

How will boycotting Walmart change the result reached by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Thompson case ??? I'd like to see, realistically, how that happens -- before I just dismiss as nonsense what you've said above.

QueEx

Dismiss whatever you like.

I see a clear connection between Wal-Mart and the Supreme Court, but it seems a waste of time trying to explain it.

You keep believing in that vote.

 

[QueEx]

Dismiss whatever you like.

I see a clear connection between Wal-Mart and the Supreme Court, but it seems a waste of time trying to explain it.

You keep believing in that vote.

LOL. You don't see Jack. If you did, you would anxiously attempt to validate your ill-conceived conclusions.

How will boycotting Walmart change the result reached by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Thompson case ??? And, when will this osmosis take place ???

QueEx