Legal News

Prosecutors' liability tactics under review

By Richard Binder

WASHINGTON ? Jailhouse snitches and error-prone crime labs ? problems that continue to bedevil the nation's criminal justice system ? form the backdrop to two U.S. Supreme Court cases with huge implications for the rights of defendants and the role of prosecutors.

Counsel representing former California Attorney General and Los Angeles District Attorney John Van de Kamp ? now of counsel to the Los Angeles office of New York-based Dewey & LeBoeuf ? and Van de Kamp's former chief assistant in the Los Angeles District Attorney's office, Curt Livesay ? now of counsel to Trutanich Michel in Long Beach, Calif. ? will urge the high court on Nov. 5 to give his two clients absolute immunity from a civil rights lawsuit whose roots are in the 1970s and 1980s jailhouse informant scandal in Los Angeles. Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, No. 07-854.

Read the full NLJ article here.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on November 04, 2008 (boomark / email).