Torts Blog: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decides question left open by the US Supreme Court in 2010: prosecutor should not be immune to civil claims for misconduct during investigation phase of a case

Torts Blog: Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decides question left open by the US Supreme Court in 2010: prosecutor should not be immune to civil claims for misconduct during investigation phase of a case:

by Alberto Bernabe

[I]n an opinion written by the very influential Judge Richard Posner, a split panel of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has held that a prosecutor is not entitled to absolute immunity when his wrongful conduct is committed during the investigation of a case which results in a wrongful conviction.  The case is called Fields v. Wharrie and the opinion is available here.
The case is remarkably similar to the one before the Supreme Court back in 2010.  Here a prosecutor fabricated evidence against a defendant during the investigative stage of the case. He then coerced witnesses to give testimony that the prosecutor (as well as the witnesses) knew to be false.  Based on the false evidence, the defendant was convicted of two murders. The defendant eventually was acquitted in a retrial and subsequently received a certificate of innocence from the court in which he had been tried. 

'via Blog this'