The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office in a case involving the wrongful prosecution of former death row inmate John Thompson. The ruling overturns a $14 million judgment against the office. In the early 1980s, an Orleans Parish jury sent Thompson to death row for the murder of hotel executive Ray Liuzza. But the courts overturned his conviction on the murder and a separate armed robbery after one of the prosecutors made a death-bed confession that he failed to turn over a blood test that proved Thompson's innocence in the armed robbery. Thompson was tried a second time for the murder and the jury found him not guilty after just 35 minutes of deliberations. 'The good is I'm able to walk these streets again. I'm able to see my grandchildren. I'm able to enjoy life,' Thompson said Tuesday after learning about the Supreme Court's ruling. A federal jury ordered the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office to pay Thompson $14 million for not training prosecutors about what evidence they were required to turn over. 'Any lawyer who gets out of law school has to know what his obligations are under that rule,' said Harry Connick, the district attorney at the time of Thompson's prosecution. Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the $14 million judgment saying Thompson's attorneys didn't prove Connick was 'deliberately indifferent' to the need to train his prosecutors about what evidence they needed to turn over. 'It was an important decision to me personally and also to the prosecutors around the country,' Connick said. Current Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro and Attorney General Buddy Caldwell jointly argued the case before the court. 'The result is right. It's good. It's fair and it's justice,' Caldwell said in a news conference Tuesday. 'We're not gonna get up here and jump up and gloat, and high five each other. This is a sad day. We had an assistant district attorney in 1984 who did an illegal, unethical, immoral, inappropriate act in order to obtain a conviction,' Cannizzaro said. Thompson has received $150,000 from the state's victim compensation fund. That's the maximum allowed by state law. Cannizzaro has always said if they weren't successful in getting the $14 million judgment overturned, the District Attorney's Office would go bankrupt. With interest, the district attorney estimates the office would owe Thompson $20 million dollars at this point.

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