◆ SpookStack

56 Nos. 77-1698, 77-1210 & 77-1370 particular claims against the defendants in Butz was left to the district court on remand. Jd. at 4963, A close reading of Butz suggests that the boundaries of the ab- solute immunity afforded prosecutors in administrative proceedings do not encompass their publicity cam- paigns. The Court said that “the decision to initiate or continue a proceeding” and “the role of an agency at- torney in conducting a trial and presenting evidence on the record to the trier of fact” are cloaked in absolute immunity but made no intimation that a prosecutor’s issuance of a press release warrants the same treatment. Id. at 4962-68. Significantly, one of the safeguards the Butz Court persistently referred to in justifying its ex- tension of absolute immunity to certain “quasi-judicial” actions of administrative prosecutors—the scrutiny a prosecutor’s discretionary decisions receive in the ad- judicatory process, id. at 4962, 4968—is absent in the publicity context. Imbler’s imposition of absolute immunity on the “Judicial phase” of a prosecutor’s duties likewise does not protect a prosecutor's publicity campaigns. Imbler’s justification for granting absolute immunity to all of a state prosecutor’s “quasi-judicial” activities has been sharply criticized, see, ¢.g., Imbler, supra, 424 U.S. at 432-47 (White, J., concurring); Developments in the Law: Section 1983, 90 Harv. L. Rev. 1188, at 1200, 1204 (1977), but even on its own terms the justification does not extend to a prosecutor’s decision to publicize his actions or actions taken by others in the community. Neither the prosecutor’s judgment “in deciding which suits to bring and in conducting them in court,” Imbler, supra, 424 U.S. at 424-25, nor “the functioning of the criminal justice system,” id. at 426-27, would be undermined by maintaining the exposure of a prosecu- tor’s public relations decisions to section 1983 liability, subject only to a qualified immunity. There is no compelling justification for extending absolute immunity to these decisions. Thus, we hold that Hanrahan’s post-raid press conferences and the. par- ticipation of Hanrahan and Jalovec in the exclusive in- terview with the Chicago Tribune and in the CBS-TV reenactment of the raid are protected only by a qualified immunity. :