Add Detroit to the list of known jailhouse informant scandals. This story–Ring of Snitches: How Detroit Police Slapped False Murder Convictions on Young Black Men–details how during the 1990s, numerous informants obtained “lenient sentences as well as food, drugs, sex and special privileges from detectives in the Detroit Police Department’s homicide division in return for making statements against dozens of prisoners eventually convicted of murder.” The story is eerily reminiscent of the Los Angeles debacle, as well the ongoing scandal in Orange County.
Denver Post examines costs and benefits of informant use
The Denver Post ran this three-part in depth series on informant use: How police reliance on confidential informants in Colorado carries risk, Some want harsher laws for confidential informants in Colorado, and Colorado gang slaying by ATF informant shows perils of informant use.
The series documents a large number of convictions obtained through informant use, including important evidence against violent gangs. It also reveals wrongful convictions, an ACLU lawsuit, tens of thousands of dollars paid to informants, and the continuing violent crimes committed by some informants while they were working for the federal government.
Texas considers banning informant testimony in capital cases
Several states are considering new legislation to regulate informant use. In Texas, HB 564 would ban the use of compensated criminal witnesses in death penalty cases altogether. The bill provides that the “testimony of an informant or of an alleged accomplice of the defendant is not admissible if the testimony is given in exchange for a grant or promise by the attorney representing the state or by another of immunity from prosecution, reduction of sentence, or any other form of leniency or special treatment.” Full story at The Intercept here. Radley Balko at the Washington Post calls the bill a “significant first step” in recognizing the inherent unreliability of informants. As Balko, who has written about informant debacles before, puts it:
“The whole concept of jailhouse informants defies credulity. The very idea that people regularly confess to crimes that could put them in prison for decades or possibly even get them executed to someone they just met in a jail cell and have known for all of a few hours is and has always been preposterous. Not to mention the fact that these are people whose word prosecutors wouldn’t trust under just about any other circumstance.”
In North Carolina, HB 700–which did not pass–would have created comprehensive regulation of jailhouse informants, including corroboration requirements, enhanced discovery, jury instructions, and data collection. Story here. An interesting feature of this bill was that it would have created a “rebuttable presumption of inadmissibility,” placing the burden on the government to show that these risky witnesses should nevertheless be permitted to testify.
Attention is turning to student informants
20/20 did this special feature on “Logan,” the U. Mass student who died of a heroin overdose after becoming a drug informant for campus police: The Dangers of a College Student Becoming a Campus Police Drug Informant. U. Mass canceled its informant program after a university working group issued this critical report.
Reason just posted this story about Andrew Sadek, a 20-year-old student at North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton, who was shot and killed after he agreed to work as an informant: Busted Over $80 Worth of Pot, College Student Turns Informant, Then Turns Up Dead.
Florida might step up again as a leader in this arena. Legislators have introduced bills that would ban the use of minors and college students as informants in buy-and-bust drug operations.
Washington Post: witness intimidation a continuing problem
This Washington Post story is entitled “Dozens in D.C., Maryland paid the ultimate price for cooperating with the police.” It documents numerous recent deaths and the continued threats to cooperating witnesses. From the story:
[A]t least 37 people in the District and Maryland [] have been killed since 2004 for cooperating with law enforcement or out of fear that they might, according to a Washington Post examination of hundreds of police and court records. . . . .
The Post’s review found that among those killed for cooperating with authorities or out of fear that they might:
●At least 19 didn’t receive protection, including a confidential informant working for the Drug Enforcement Administration who was lured to a home by a drug dealer’s girlfriend and then fatally shot by the dealer.
●At least five were killed after defense attorneys learned their names or other identifying information and told their clients. In one case, a lawyer tipped off a defendant that prosecutors wanted to interview the witness. Six days later, the witness was found dead.
●Nine were offered protection but declined, including a 38-year-old Baltimore County man who was unaware of the long criminal history — including murder, attempted murder and firearms charges — of the man he was scheduled to testify against.
●At least five were slain after they were relocated but returned to their old neighborhoods.
●In at least four cases, charges against a defendant were dropped after the witness was killed.