From the Ninth Circuit, rejecting a claim over plaintiff's prolonged pretrial detention; Plaintiff sued the supervising prosecutors and the county, alleging they suppressed exculpatory evidence and thus caused his lengthy detention. This case has several things we have studied or will study next week.
• The court held that the supervising prosecutors have prosecutorial immunity because the decision to seek and not to drop charges is prosecutorial. Plaintiff tried to argue that the supervisors established and maintained a "code of conduct" that expected prosecutors to win at all costs and that administering such a code was an administrative activity. But the court said (along the lines we discussed in class) that this is not an employment policy or an office-management policy; this is a policy about how to prosecute cases. We could frame it as we did in class-to prove the violation requires proving misconduct (not dropping charges) in his prosecution.
• The court denied leave to amend to add a failure-to-train policy because the claim would fail on causation. Why? Because the line prosecutors all pointed out to their supervisors that the continued prosecution of the plaintiff was unethical and unconstitutional. The supervisors ignored those suggestions and continued the detention. But this means better training would not have avoided the constitutional violation--even had the prosecutors been trained, the supervisors still ignored their suggestions.
• The court rejected the claim against the Monell claim against the county for something we will hit on Tuesday or next week: Whether the DA's office is an arm of the state or the county? Be ready to discuss this analysis in class on Tuesday.
