The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether a man who served 24 years in prison before his murder conviction was overturned can sue two former prosecutors, including a former California attorney general, for allegedly violating his civil rights.
Thomas Goldstein, now 59, was convicted of a 1979 murder on the strength of a jailhouse informant’s testimony that Goldstein had confessed to the crime. The informant testified that he received no benefit in return, but evidence that came to light later suggested he had struck a deal to get a lighter sentence.
Two federal judges and a federal appeals panel eventually ruled that Goldstein was wrongly convicted, and he was freed in 2004.
Individual prosecutors typically may not be sued for their decisions, but Goldstein sued former District Attorney John K. Van de Kamp and his former chief deputy, Curt Livesay, claiming that as managers they had a policy of relying on jailhouse informants even though it sometimes led to false evidence.
Van de Kamp later became California attorney general. He still practices law in Los Angeles and chairs the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, set up by state lawmakers to look at ways of preventing wrongful convictions.
Van de Kamp and Livesay appealed to the Supreme Court after a trial judge and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Goldstein’s lawsuit could proceed. The case will be argued in the fall.
Goldstein was a college student when he was arrested in the Nov. 3, 1979, shotgun killing of John McGinest in Long Beach. Goldstein lived nearby, but no physical evidence implicated him.
Also Monday, the court refused to review a 30-year prison sentence for a person who was 12 when he killed his grandparents in their South Carolina home. Christopher Pittman, who turned 19 last week, shot his grandparents Joe and Joy Pittman with a shotgun in 2001, then set fire to their home and drove off in their car.
During his trial four years later, Pittman’s attorneys unsuccessfully argued that the slayings were influenced by the antidepressant Zoloft — a charge the maker of the drug vigorously denied. The Supreme Court appeal dealt only with the length of Pittman’s sentence.
