Recap: Tuesday's Supreme Court Action

WASHINGTON (AP) — A look at Tuesday's action inside of the Supreme Court.

Court won't allow private prison employees lawsuit

The Supreme Court won't allow employees at a privately run federal prison to be sued by an inmate in federal court, despite his complaint that their neglect left him with two permanently damaged arms.

The high court ruled 8-1 to throw out the federal lawsuit by inmate Richard Lee Pollard against employees of the GEO Group, formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections Corp. Pollard wanted to sue for his treatment after he fell and fractured both of his elbows at the privately run Taft Correctional Institution in Taft, Calif.

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote for the court that Pollard should have sued in state court, where there would be "significant deterrence and compensation" if Pollard could prove GEO officials mistreated him.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the only dissenter in this case.

Supreme Court rules in favor of arbitration

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that disputes between consumers and companies that issue low-rate credit cards to people with bad credit ratings can be handled in business-friendly arbitration, rather than federal court.

The justices voted 8-1 to reverse a federal appeals court ruling allowing consumers to sue in federal court, the latest in a string of recent high court decisions in favor of arbitration. The consumers said they were promised an initial $300 in available credit, but were charged $257 in fees in the first year they had the credit card.

But the court, with only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissenting, agreed with the companies' argument that the dispute must be settled through arbitration, under an agreement that the customers signed to receive the card.

The federal Credit Repair Organizations Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, says consumers have a right to sue, which the federal appeals court in San Francisco interpreted as a right to go to court, rather than be forced to submit to arbitration.

Appeals courts in Atlanta and Philadelphia have ruled otherwise in evaluating the same language in the law.

The Supreme Court has resolved that conflict among appeals courts in favor of business interests.

The case is CompuCredit Corp. v. Greenwood, 10-948.

Court overturns New Orleans murder conviction

The Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a death row inmate's conviction of killing five people in the justices' latest slap at the conduct of prosecutors in the New Orleans district attorney's office.

The high court voted 8-1 to order a new trial Tuesday for Juan Smith, who was convicted of five murders at a 1995 party. The only witness to identify Smith, Larry Boatner, gave inconsistent statements about whether he could recognize or identify Smith as one of the killers.

Prosecutors under former New Orleans district attorney Harry Connick never gave Smith's lawyers those statements or other statements that could have been favorable to the defense. Prosecutors are required to do this under Supreme Court precedent.

"Boatner's undisclosed statements alone suffice to undermine confidence in Smith's conviction," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court's opinion.

New Orleans District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said Tuesday they will retry Smith. "Tomorrow morning we will file a motion in this quintuple murder case to set it for trial within the next 60 days," Cannizzaro said in a statement.

Justice Clarence Thomas was the only dissenter. He said that the Boatner statements were not enough to believe that the jury would have found Smith not guilty.

"The question presented here is not whether a prudent prosecutor should have disclosed the information that Smith identified," Thomas said in his dissent. "Rather, the question is whether the cumulative effect of the disclosed and undisclosed evidence in Smith's case 'puts the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict.'"

This is the second time in two terms that the Supreme Court has dealt with violations in the New Orleans prosecutor's office of so-called Brady rights, named after the Supreme Court's Brady v. Maryland case, which says prosecutors violate a defendant's constitutional rights by not turning over evidence that could prove a person's innocence. The high court earlier this year overturned a $14 million judgment given to a former death row inmate who was convicted of murder after the same New Orleans office withheld evidence in his trial. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a rare oral dissent, called the prosecutors' actions "gross" and "deliberately indifferent."

Smith was convicted in eight 1995 killings. His Supreme Court appeal deals with a quintuple murder known in New Orleans as the Roman Street massacre, where armed intruders killed four people at a party. A fifth person died later, and Boatner escaped death by pretending to be unconscious.

Boatner gave differing statements about whether he could identify the shooters, but eventually identified Smith at