A prosecutor has no immunity from a civil rights suit alleging that a material witness in a murder case was jailed indefinitely because the prosecutor failed to inform the court that the murder trial was delayed by several months, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.
“No reasonable prosecutor would think that she could indefinitely detain an innocent witness pending trial without obtaining reauthorization,” U.S. Circuit Judge D. Brooks Smith wrote in the 47-page opinion in Schneyder v. Smith .
