Overturned
on Appeal
Leslie
K. Penny
Module
7 Research Assignment 6
Chancellor
University
Abstract
The following essay
depicts two completely different court cases that survived the appeals process
in their favor. The first case is of a
convicted murderer who was wrongly imprisoned because a prosecutor withheld exculpatory
evidence during his murder trial. He sat
on death row for over a century and was saved by appeal within a month of his
execution date. The other case involves
copyright law where one man took photographs taken by another and altered them
without permission to such an extent that the Appeals court ruled he was within
fair use and did not infringe on any copyright laws.
Overturned
on Appeal
Having a case overturned on appeal is a defendants dream
come true and a prosecutors bane, ripe with disappointment. Appeals are not a light subject that are
casually made. To a defendant, if their
case is not eventually appealed, the consequences can be devastating especially
if it is a murder trial. On a lesser
note, if not overturned on appeal, a case can include anything from financial
penalties to an individual's loss of freedom.
Before us are two cases that were overturned on appeal: Connick, District
Attorney, et al. v. Thompson and Richard Prince v. Federal Appeals Court.
In the first case, Connick v. Thompson 42 U.S.C. 1983,
argued October 6, 2010 and decided March 29, 2011, cites Brady violation,
municipal liability and failure-to-train liability (Connick v. Thompson, 2010). In
April of 1985, John Thompson, the respondent, was convicted of attempted
armed robbery and, just a mere month later in May, he was convicted of
first-degree murder in the same court where he was sentenced to death (Connick v.
Thompson, 2010). It was later learned in 1999 by an
investigator that prosecutors on Thompson's case had "failed to present an
important crime lab report in the attempted armed robber case" (Connick v.
Thompson, 2010).
The evidence that the prosecution withheld was a lab
report that showed the perpetrator of the attempted armed robbery had a
complete different blood type (type B blood) than that of Thompson who has type
O blood (Connick v. Thompson, 2010). With that new evidence, a court in Louisiana
vacated the conviction of attempted robbery which, subsequently, led to the
reversal of Thompson's murder conviction in a Louisiana court of appeals based
"on the grounds that the improper attempted armed robbery conviction had
deprived Thompson of his constitutional right to testify in his own defense at
the murder trial" (Connick v. Thompson, 2010).
John Thompson sat in jail for 18 years because of the
above wrongful conviction because a prosecutor withheld exculpatory evidence
which was in violation of the Brady v.
Maryland (Connick v. Thompson, 2010). Once released, he filed suit against the
district attorney's office, pursuant to 42 U.S.C 1983, alleging they were
liable for failing to properly train its employees on the requirements of Brady (Connick v. Thompson, 2010). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit agreed, assigning liability to the district attorney's office but
petitioners appealed to the Supreme Court (Connick v. Thompson, 2010).
The Issue of this case is whether "a single failure
by prosecutors to provide exculpatory evidence to a defendant sufficient to
establish failure-to-train liability against a District Attorney's
Office?" (Connick v. Thompson, 2010). Thompson was awarded by the jury $14 million
in damages for the suppression of exculpatory evidence caused by the
"deliberate indifference to an obvious need to train, monitor, or
supervise" Connick's prosecutors (Connick v. Thompson, 2010).
One major high light to this case is that Thompson spent
14 years on death row and just one month before his scheduled execution date,
"his investigator discovered the undisclosed evidence from his armed
robbery trial" (Connick v. Thompson, 2010) saving him in the
nick of time. This is a great example as
to why there has to be a sufficient amount of time provided to inmates to
appeal their cases.
The second case involves artist Richard Prince in Cariou
v. Prince No. 08 Civ. 11327 (DAB), March 18, 2011 (Cariou v. Prince, 2011). The case started in 2011 where Richard Prince lost a major copyright
lawsuit against photographer Patrick Carious (Cade, 2013). Basically, Prince took photos taken by
Carious and appropriated, modified, and then displayed them at a gallery
exhibition which he and the gallery profited roughly $10 million worth in sales
from (Cade, 2013). Cariou sued Prince for using his photos without
permission but "Prince argued that his appropriation of the photographs
should be allowed under the fair-use exceptions to federal copyright
protections, which permitted limited borrowing of protected material for
purposes like commentary, criticism, news reporting and scholarship" (Kennedy,
2013).
However, the
United states Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that Judge Batt's
interpretation, where she wrote "that for a fair use to apply, a new work
of art must be transformative- that it must, in some way comment on, relate to
the historical context of, or critically refer back to the original work" (Kennedy,
2013)
and ruling in Patrick Cariou's favor, were wrong. Last May, the appeals court ruled that
"the law does not require that a secondary use comment on the original
artist to work, or popular culture, but only a reasonable observer find the
work to be transformative" (Kennedy, 2013).
This case
represented not only the artist and their views, it also represented "the
largest financial stake in an art copyright cases" (Boucher,
2013). If the case had not been appealed, some very
rich members of our society would have lost out the millions of dollars they
spent buying his paintings. Prince
himself would have missed out on the millions his paintings would bring
in. However, the individual who actually
took the pictures that Prince altered, will forever see his copyrighted
pictures being used and sold under another person. I believe what grabbed the appellate courts
attention the most was the injunction's requirement that Prince's unsold works
were to be destroyed (Boucher, 2013).
Both of
these cases only have one similarity.
They were overturned on appeal.
One to save a man's life, the other to allow one mans interpretation of
another man's work be allowed even if that work is copyrighted. The first case was a clear cut injustice of
the accused. The second case, I am not
so sure. I feel in the second case, the
federal courts decision was right. I do
not agree with Judge Batt, who ordered the art in question to be destroyed, but
I do agree that Mr. Prince should have gotten permission from the original
photographer, Mr. Cariou of the altered pictures. But, the Federal Appeals Court disagreed. The two cases, dissimilar as they may be,
represent the consequences some individuals face if their cases are not
appealed.
Works Cited
Boucher, B. (2013, 04 25). Richard Prince Wins
Major Victory in Landmark Copyright Suit. Retrieved 06 23, 2013, from Art
in America: http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/news/2013-04-25/richard-prince-wins-major-victory-in-landmark-copyright-suit/
Cade, D. (2013, 04
26). Appeals Court Overturns Previous, Ruling, Rules Fair Use in Richard
Prince Case. Retrieved 06 23, 2013, from PetaPixel:
http://petapixel.com/2013/04/26/appeals-court-overturns-previous-ruling-rules-fair-use-in-richard-prince-case/
Cariou v. Prince. (2011, 03 18). Retrieved 06 23, 2013, from Scholar
Google: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=18222445238017802130&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr
Connick v. Thompson. (2010, October 06). Retrieved 06 23, 2013, from
Cornell University of Law School: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/09-571
Kennedy, R. (2013, 04
25). Court Rules in Artist's Favor. Retrieved 06 2013, 2013, from The
New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/arts/design/appeals-court-ruling-favors-richard-prince-in-copyright-case.html
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