Rules for Malicious Prosecution Suits Are Eased by High Court

The Supreme Court made it slightly easier Thursday for a crime suspect who is innocent to seek damages for a malicious prosecution.

On a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that a defendant can win damages if he proves that a prosecutor fabricated evidence about his crime or wrongly pronounced him guilty during a press conference.

However, the high court stressed that prosecutors, like judges, are generally immune from being sued for their statements in the courtroom or in preparing an indictment. Only when they act as an investigator or voice their views outside the courtroom can they be sued, the justices said.

According to the allegations made by Stephen Buckley, he and two co-defendants were indicted for the highly publicized murder of an 11-year-old girl by a prosecutor who was facing a tough reelection challenge in 1984. Just 12 days before the primary election, prosecutor Michael Fitzsimmons called a press conference to announce that new evidence had led to indictment of the three suspects.

The piece of evidence came from a private crime expert with a dubious reputation, according to Buckley. Investigators had found a mark on the door of the murdered girl’s house, but state and national crime experts said it did not match Buckley’s bootprint. The prosecutor then turned to a private expert from North Carolina who claimed that the mark and the boot matched.

Based largely on this evidence, Buckley was held in jail for three years, tried for murder and finally released. Even though another man, Brian Dugan, has confessed to the murder of the young girl, two of Buckley’s co-defendants remain behind bars.

After his release in 1987, Buckley filed a malicious prosecution suit against several police investigators and officials from DuPage County, seeking $8 million in damages. His allegations have not been heard by a jury.

However, a federal judge in Chicago and a U.S. appeals court threw out the charges against Fitzsimmons and the other prosecutors on the grounds that these government attorneys have an “absolute immunity” from being sued for their official actions.

The ruling returns the case to a trial judge in Chicago.