In an historic and rare event, a Texas judge last month began a hearing on the constitutionality of the death penalty, entertaining arguments that the system is so prone to erroneous conviction that it might violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The defense called numerous experts from around the country (including me) to testify on various aspects of the death penalty including: error rates, the use of unreliable eyewitness testimony, junk science and forensic evidence, informants, discovery, death-qualified juries, and race. Story and witness list here: Hearing on Constitutionality of Texas Death Penalty. At the government’s request, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed the hearing after two days and the parties are now briefing matters. For additional information, see Fountain’s Pen blog: Appeals court orders stay in death penalty hearing.
Harris County, TX offering jailhouse snitches $5000
More Texas news. The Harris County jail has a new “Crime Stoppers” program aimed at inmates who call in information, offering rewards of up to $5,000. Houston Chronicle story here: Jailhouse informers: Inmates can offer tips, get paid. County Sheriff Adrian Garcia explains the idea:
“When people are coming into the jail environment, we recognize they’re vulnerable,” Garcia said. “They’re caught and being processed. We wanted to take advantage of that psychology. If they are the only one caught and they’ve been involved in a crime someone else planned, it may be a good idea for them to speak up.”
While the idea of extending Crime Stoppers to criminals might seem logical, Grits for Breakfast points out some challenges:
One critical difference between jailhouse snitches and others who call Crime Stoppers, though: While an arrest may be made or criminal charges filed based on testimony from a jailhouse informant, in 2009 the Texas Legislature, in a bill authored by state Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, required corroboration for jailhouse snitches’ testimony in order to secure a conviction. Another difference: Jail calls are never anonymous.
The oddest aspect of the new program is that it completely ignores the well-documented tendency of jailhouse snitches to lie in exchange for benefits. From the Los Angeles Grand Jury investigation to the Canadian Kaufman inquiry, the Illinois Commission on the death penalty, and the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice report, numerous official studies have documented the pervasive use of snitches in U.S. jails and the potent dangers of wrongful conviction that flow from doing so. See for example, The Snitch System Report by Northwestern University Law School, concluding that criminal snitches constitute the “leading cause of wrongful convictions in U.S. capital cases.” It is thus hard to see how Crime Stoppers’ executive director Katherine Cabannis can say that “she believes the program will be successful because it solicits crime information from an untapped population” or how it can be that District Attorney Pat Lykos “sees no potential downsides.” Indeed, jailhouse snitch testimony is so infamously unreliable that it compelled Texas to enact its corroboration requirement, which I applauded here: Texas requires corroboration for jailhouse snitches. While the corroboration requirement should mitigate some of the dangers of Harris County’s new reward program, in this day and age government officials should think long and hard before creating new incentives for jailhouse informants.
Welcome to John Buckley
I’m pleased to introduce January’s guest blogger John Buckley from the United Kingdom. John brings a comparative perspective, as the UK and US handle informants quite differently. He also brings his expertise as a former law enforcement officer with decades of experience handling confidential informants. Here is his bio:
John Buckley is a former UK law enforcement officer with over 28 years policing experience in counter terrorism and intelligence gathering. He is the author of two books. “The Human Source Management System: The use of psychology in the management of human intelligence sources.” and “Invest Now or Pay Later: The management of risk in covert law enforcement.” He is the co author of the United Kingdom Home Office Research Paper “Human Source Management — A better way to manage human intelligence sources.” He has been involved in numerous working groups on the management of confidential sources including that working on UK national policy. He has acted as a consultant in developing purpose built software for managing covert law enforcement operations and trained officers from across the world in all aspects of managing informants. He is a regular speaker at law enforcement conferences. He can be contacted at www.hsmtraining.com.
Comments
Due to overwhelming amounts of spam, Snitching Blog unfortunately can no longer accept comments. If you have information that you would like to bring to my attention, you can reach me by email through Loyola Law School’s website.
Washington State introduces exciting new legislation
Senator Bob McCaslin (R-Spokane Valley) has introduced Senate Bill 5004 which would vastly improve the way Washington creates and uses criminal informants: An Act Relating to disclosure and regulation of criminal informant evidence and testimony. The effort was triggered by this case — More on the Spokane convictions –in which three young men were convicted based on the testimony of a criminal informant. Even after an acccomplice recanted, saying that the three were set up, the boys still were denied a new trial. The family of one of the three, Paul Statler, has been vigorously advocating for legislative change — hence SB 5004. Inlander Magazine story here: Reasonable Doubt. Full disclosure: I provided Sen. McCaslin’s office with information in support of this bill, and I am strongly in favor of the effort.
This bill is an excellent example of the kinds of legislative change that we can expect more of, as legislatures and the public learn more about the risks of informant use. It is also a moving example of how families of young defendants are influencing the debate over informant policy — see Florida’s Rachel’s Law offers some protection to informants, and Recruiting new informants. This is such an important phenomenon that Snitching.org has created a new subject matter area devoted to it: Families & Youth. More to come.