Thomas Goldstein v. City of Long Beach

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

THOMAS LEE GOLDSTEIN, No. 10-56787 Plaintiff-Appellant, D.C. No. v. 2:04-cv-09692-

AHM-E

CITY OF LONG BEACH; JOHN HENRY

MILLER, in his individual and official capacity; WILLIAM OPINION COLLETTE, in his individual and official capacity; LOGAN WREN, in his individual and official capacity; WILLIAM MACLYMAN, in his individual and official capacity, Defendants,

and

COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES,

Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California A. Howard Matz, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted November 8, 2012—Pasadena, California

Filed May 8, 2013 Before: Stephen Reinhardt and Sidney R. Thomas, Circuit Judges, and Gloria M. Navarro, District Judge.*

Opinion by Judge Thomas; Concurrence by Judge Reinhardt

SUMMARY**

Civil Rights

The panel reversed the district court’s grant of a motion for judgment on the pleadings, entered following a decision by the United States Supreme Court, and held that the County of Los Angeles could be liable pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 because the district…

concurring:

I concur fully in Judge Thomas’s opinion and write separately to make two points, one brief and one less so.

I.

Judge Thomas understates the problem with the eponymous and notorious Edward Fink, if that is possible. In the case that Judge Thomas cites, Thompson v. Calderon, 120 F.3d 1045 (9th Cir.1997) (en banc), rev’d, 523 U.S. 538 , 118 S.Ct. 1489 , 140 L.Ed.2d 728 (1998), Thomas Thompson was executed on the basis of Fink’s perjured testimony. It is unlikely that Thompson was death-eligible for his part in the crime, if he was guilty at all of any offense. See generally Stephen Reinhardt, The Anatomy of an Execution: Fairness vs. ‘Process”, 74 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 313 , 322-26 (1999). At Thompson’s trial, the prosecutor committed prosecutorial misconduct that constituted a constitutional violation and required reversal. See Thompson, 120 F.3d at 1055 . Additionally, Thompson’s lawyer provided woefully inadequate representation, which constituted another constitutional violation that required reversal. See id. at 1053-54 .

Despite a request to reverse Thompson’s conviction by seven California prosecutors with. extensive death penalty experience, including the author of…

We consider in this case whether a district attorney acts as a local or a state official when establishing policy and training related to the use of jailhouse informants. We find that, as to the policies at issue here, the district attorney was acting as a final policymaker 'for the County of Los Angeles. We thus reverse the district court’s grant of the motion for judgment on the pleadings and remand the case.

I

Thomas Goldstein spent 24 years in prison after being convicted for murder based largely upon the perjured testimony of an unreliable jailhouse informant, the aptro-nymic Edward Fink. Van de Kamp v. Goldstein, 555 U.S. 335, 339 , 129 S.Ct. 855 , 172 L.Ed.2d 706 (2009); see also Thompson v. Calderon, 120 F.3d 1045, 1053-1054 (9th Cir.1997) (describing Fink as a “perennial informant,” and describing his exploits in some detail), rev’d, 523 U.S. 538 , 118 S.Ct. 1489 , 140 L.Ed.2d 728 (1998).

Fink was a heroin addict and convicted felon who had previously received reduced sentences by testifying in other cases and received a reduced sentence in exchange for his testimony against Goldstein. Goldstein v. Superior Court, 45 Cal.4th 218 , 85 Cal.Rptr.3d 213 , 195…