From Justice Sotomayor's statement today respecting the denial of review in Price v. Montgomery County:
Nickie Miller was charged with murder based on the false confession of a witness. The witness later recanted her coerced confession, including in jailhouse letters she sent to her husband. Upon learning about the letters, a court ordered the witness to retrieve and turn them over to Miller's defense team. The lead prosecutor on Miller's case, Keith Craycraft, instead allegedly encouraged the witness to destroy the letters in response to the court order. The witness destroyed the letters instead of turning them over.
Miller spent two years in prison before the State dropped the charges against him. Miller then sued Craycraft and others under 42 U. S. C. §1983 for malicious prosecution, fabrication and destruction of evidence, due process violations, and conspiracy. The District Court dismissed the claims against Craycraft, concluding that he had absolute immunity as a prosecutor. The Sixth Circuit agreed, but noted that Craycraft's "successful pressuring of [the witness] to destroy her jailhouse correspondence" was "difficult to justify and seemingly unbecoming of an official entrusted with enforcing the criminal law." Miller now asks this Court to decide whether absolute immunity is available under §1983 when, as here, a prosecutor knowingly destroys exculpatory evidence and defies a court order.
The Court's denial of certiorari should not signal tolerance of the prosecutor's conduct. {The Court may deny certiorari for many reasons, including that the facts presented by a petition do not clearly or cleanly implicate a division of authority among the lower courts.}
