Court Weighs Prosecutors Immunity

WASHINGTON (AP) Prosecutors who lie when seeking arrest warrants should
always be shielded from being sued by innocent people who are jailed as a
result, government lawyers told the Supreme Court Tuesday.

The justices seemed skeptical, but they also had doubtful questions for the
lawyer of a Seattle area man who spent a night in jail for a burglary he did not
commit. The lawyer argued against giving prosecutors absolute legal immunity in
such cases.

Past Supreme Court rulings have given the nation's prosecutors absolute immunity
when they act even dishonestly in initiating and prosecuting a criminal
case but not when they perform administrative or investigative work.

The court will use the Seattle case to decide, sometime by June, which function
prosecutors carry out when seeking an arrest warrant.

"It all boils down to how you analyze the function," said Justice Sandra Day
O'Connor.

Rodney Fletcher of Auburn, Wash., was arrested in 1993 and charged with stealing
computer equipment from a school in Seattle. The charges were quickly dropped
but not before he spent a night in the King County jail.

He later sued Lynne Kalina, a county deputy prosecutor. Fletcher's lawsuit
alleged that she had made statements she should have known to be false when
seeking a court warrant for his arrest.

Kalina filed documents that said Fletcher never had been associated with the
school and did not have permission to enter it. She also said someone identified
Fletcher as the man who tried to sell computer equipment taken from the school.

Fletcher in fact had done some construction work inside the school months before
the burglary, so it was not surprising that his fingerprints were found there.
And his lawsuit alleged that no witness linked him to the sale of the stolen
computer equipment.

Kalina sought to have Fletcher's lawsuit thrown out based on her claim of
absolute immunity. A federal trial judge and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals refused to do that.

Before the nation's highest court, King County Prosecutor Norman Maleng argued
that Kalina was performing a prosecutorial duty when filing a sworn statement in
seeking the arrest warrant.

But O'Connor and Justice David H. Souter, persistently interrupting Maleng,
noted that a police officer carrying out the same procedure would not be
entitled to absolute immunity.

And Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Maleng, "How can the same act be
prosecutorial if done by one person but investigatory if done by another?"

Maleng said that Kalina's act should be protected because she was simultaneously
deciding to begin the process of prosecuting Fletcher.

"The sensitive decision to initiate a criminal prosecution is what is
protected," he contended.

Several justices voiced doubts about the distinction Maleng and Justice
Department lawyer Patricia Millett attempted to draw.

Millett said Kalina "was performing a hybrid function" that should qualify for
absolute immunity because part of it was prosecutorial.

But Timothy Ford, Fletcher's lawyer, argued that his client deserves his day in
court to prove his case against Kalina.

"Our fundamental complaint is false arrest," Ford said. "Our claim is Lynne
Kalina manufactured false evidence against Rodney Fletcher."

The case is Kalina vs. Fletcher, 96792.