District court denies (partially) motion to dismiss in case against prosecutors for using fake subpoenas and threats to trick witnesses and victims into cooperating with investigations - UPDATED

Long time readers of this blog know that I have reported on a number of cases documenting the misconduct of prosecutors in New Orleans.  (See here.)

Earlier this month, I heard about a new similar case making its way through the courts.  In this case, the plaintiffs allege that the Orleans Parish DA's office for years have been using fake subpoenas to coerce cooperation from witnesses and victims of crimes.  According to the allegations, prosecutors sent out bogus subpoenas -- bearing threats of fines and imprisonment -- to hundreds of witnesses, even though the subpoenas had not been approved by courts overseeing the ongoing prosecutions. The DA's office was simply cranking out fake subpoenas and hoping recipients would be too intimidated by the threat of jail time to question the veracity of the documents.

Several lawsuits followed, and the District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana recently decided a motion to dismiss in one of them.  It held that the prosecutors had immunity for some of the alleged conduct, but not for all.  In fact, the court held that the individual defendants are not entitled to absolute immunity for their alleged role in creating or delivering “subpoenas” to victims and witnesses of crimes.

Typically, prosecutors have absolute immunity for their work as litigators, but only qualified immunity for their work as members of the law enforcement team, or as investigators.  It is often not easy to determine when one role ends and the other begins, which is why, as you would expect, there is quite a bit of case law on the subject.  But, in this case, it looks like the court thought that creating and delivering the fake subpoenas was part of the pre-litigation state of the building a case.

Evidently, the plaintiffs will still have to deal with the defense of qualified immunity, but it will be interesting to see how the case develops from now on.

You can read the court's opinion here.   Tech Dirt has a comment on the case here.

UPDATE (2/16/20):  ABove the Law has a comment on the case here.

UPDATE (4/23/20):  the Fifth Circuit Court of appeals affirmed the lower court.  Bloomberg has the story here.