Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

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Gerald Shur, Architect of Witness Protection Program, Dies at 86

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Gerald Shur was a DOJ lawyer who started the federal witness security program (WITSEC) in 1970. The program elevated the use of high-profile informants and is widely credited with helping bring down the mafia. Shur co-authored a 2002 book “WITSEC: Inside the Federal Witness Protection Program” with the journalist Pete Earley. From the obituary in the New York Times:

“Mr. Shur had standards governing which witnesses got into the program: They had to have real evidence against someone of importance, and they had to be in real jeopardy if they agreed to provide it. ‘I guarantee you,’ Mr. Shur said in the 2007 interview, ‘that the kind of people we accept are ones where if the guy testified on Monday morning and didn’t get protection he would be dead Monday afternoon.’ The program has drawn its share of complaints, especially early on, when the number of participants grew quickly. Some of those given new identities complained of inadequate support or security in their new lives, or of trouble with paperwork. And sometimes, since many protected witnesses were lifelong criminals, they returned to their former lives.”

FBI using informants to surveil Black Lives Matter activists

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This piece in the Intercept reviews official documents showing, among other things, how the FBI used informants to surveil Black Lives Matter activists after Ferguson and beyond: FBI Tracked an Activist Involved With Black Lives Matter as They Traveled Across the U.S., Documents Show. Michael German, former FBI agent and now a national security expert at the Brennan Center, described it as “clearly just tracking First Amendment activity.”

The FBI’s history of using informants to surveil political activity, especially Black activists, stretches back decades. Historian Elizabeth Hinton wrote about it today in the Atlantic. Professor Gary Marx wrote a seminal book about it years ago titled Undercover: Police Surveillance in America. More recently we have seen similar FBI tactics deployed against Muslim communities.

New Jersey AG issues jailhouse informant directive

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The New Jersey Attorney General issued Directive 2020-11 which requires all state prosecutors to seek supervisory approval before using jailhouse informants. That approval process requires, among other things, the collection of comprehensive information regarding the proposed informant witness. Supervisors must satisfy themselves that prosecutors have met their discovery obligations, and that “there is independent, credible evidence corroborating the informant’s testimony.”

Parents testify in support of Matthew’s Law in Minnesota

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In 2019, Matthew Klaus died of a drug overdose while working as a confidential informant for Minnesota police. He was a recovering heroin addict who relapsed while working for the police; he was instructed to buy from the dealer who eventually sold him a fatal dose. His parents, John and Denise Klaus, are advocating for a new law that would protect recovering addicts like Matthew from being used as drug informants. See the Star Tribune story here: After son’s fatal overdose, Oronoco couple champion law reforming police use of informants. The proposed legislation is here.

Chicago jailhouse confessions admitted after informant reliability hearing

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In an early test of Illinois’s new reliability hearing requirement, a judge held that three men would be permitted to testify at trial after vetting them in a pre-trial informant reliability hearing. All three alleged that the defendant had confessed to them while incarcerated. The judge based his ruling in part on his finding that “no deal, no promises, no inducements or benefits were made by the state.”