2019 Holocaust remembrance in San Antonio will focus on the spiritual, armed, intellectual, defensive and political forms of resistance under the Nazi regime.

What Happens If We Don’t Turn The Other Cheek

Our laws are fairly accepting when it comes to the use of violence in cases of self-defense. Things are less clear when it comes to defending yourself against officers of the law. Georgetown University professor Jason Brennan joins host Krys Boyd to make the case that we should rethink the immunity granted to those whose job is to protect us. His essay “When Nonviolence Isn’t Enough” appears in Reason magazine.

Taken together, the lawsuits represent a serious financial threat to the District Attorney’s Office. In 2011, the office narrowly avoided having to make a $14 million payout to John Thompson, who spent 14 years on death row before his conviction was tossed out. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that there was not enough evidence that the local prosecutors had engaged in a pattern of misconduct.

Thompson's own prosecution involved hidden blood evidence in a carjacking case that former District Attorney Harry Connick's office used to help secure his conviction and death sentence in the high-profile murder of New Orleans hotel executive Ray Liuzza Jr.

Thompson was accused in both crimes, which took place a few months apart in 1984. Connick's office tried him first in the carjacking. A jury convicted him, and a judge handed Thompson a 49-year prison sentence. Thompson then declined to take the witness stand in his murder trial, knowing the earlier conviction would come into play if he testified. He'd spent 14 years on death row and was just 30 days from an execution date that appeared certain when an investigator discovered blood evidence from the carjacking victim's clothes that the state never revealed. It was the carjacker's blood, but it wasn't Thompson's. A former prosecutor then revealed that Gerry Deegan, one of the prosecutors who tried Thompson, confessed on his deathbed in 1994 that he intentionally hid the blood evidence.

Both convictions were thrown out, and Thompson was acquitted in a 2003 retrial for Liuzza's murder. Thompson testified in his own defense, along with new witnesses who contradicted the state's evidence. He was released that day and later won a federal jury verdict for $14 million in 2007. [But in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court dissolved that award, ruling in 2011 that a district attorney's office can't be held liable for a single violation of Brady v. Maryland, the 1963 decision that requires prosecutors to turn over all favorable evidence to the defense. Thompson had failed to show there was a pattern of violations in Connick's office that would demonstrate "deliberate indifference" in failing to train prosecutors, the court found in an opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas. Thompson wasn't shy afterward in accusing Connick's office of criminal acts, in his case and others.

AndyH wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 2:40 am I don't know why the other "think" episodes are up, but "...turn the...cheek..." isn't. I sent an email...we'll see what they say. It was an excellent interview that covered more ground than the linked Reason article.

Hi, Andy – Thanks for letting us know the podcast was missing – we’ve popped it on there and you should be able to listen/download now.

Thanks for listening!

highdesert wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 6:31 pm There is a huge legal barrier in taking action against law enforcement officers. Courts and juries assume they are acting with clean hands which is not always the case. It's even harder when it's a DA withholding evidence.

Prosecutorial abuse, it happens because everyone assumes that all prosecutors are honest or that the bar association will take care of them. There should be laws....