Today, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in favor of the prosecutors in Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, a case that addressed whether prosecutors have absolute immunity from liability for failing to provide criminal defendants with constitutionally-required exculpatory information. Constitutional Accountability Center (CAC) filed an amicus brief in this case in support of the respondent, Thomas Lee Goldstein, who spent 24 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of murder based on the false testimony of a self-interested jailhouse informant.

Text & History will feature a longer reaction to this opinion later this week. For background on this case, including an explanation of why the doctrine of absolute prosecutorial immunity departs sharply from the text and history of critical statutes passed to enforce the Civil War Amendments to the Constitution, please see our preview and review of the oral argument.