Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

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California informant bill passes out of committee

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A bill that would improve recordkeeping and disclosure regarding jailhouse informants just passed out of the California Legislature’s Public Safety Committee.  The bill would also cap certain informants benefits.  Bill here and ACLU press release here.

I testified in support of the bill along with Bruce Lisker, who was wrongfully convicted of murder at age 17 based on jailhouse informant testimony, and spent 26 years in prison before he was exonerated.  Here is Mr. Lisker’s testimony from today’s hearing:

“Honorable Assembly Persons, my name is Bruce Lisker.  I am here to urge a YES vote on AB359.  On March 10, 1983 my teenage world became a nightmare. I discovered my mother beaten, stabbed and left for dead on the floor of our Sherman Oaks home. It wasn’t long before a corrupt LAPD detective was, unbelievably, arresting ME for the attack.  I was cast into the notorious “Snitch Tank” at L.A. County Jail, where I met a vile creature known as Robert Hughes, a morally bankrupt jailhouse informant with an extensive rap sheet and one overriding mission – to get out of jail.

After conning me into innocent conversation, Hughes told police I’d confessed to him. I was the fourth target of his lies inside of 18 months.  Police fed him cigarettes and food, flew him in private LAPD aircraft – and my prosecutor got him sprung from prison months early.

Hughes’ lies, and the criminal justice system that encourages them, cost me more than twenty-six years of freedom and youth I can never get back.  Had AB359 been the law of the land, my lawyer would have known that Hughes had a lengthy history of severe mental health issues, including documented psychotic breaks.

He was given inducements to investigate and testify against me, had unrecorded interviews with police about the case, and undue influence rewarded his lies with the thing he coveted most, his freedom.  All this was hidden or misrepresented by police and prosecutors.

Evidence is clear – jailhouse informant testimony is a leading causes of wrongful conviction in America.  As demonstrated by the recent outrage in Orange County, and investigations in at least five other California counties, this problem persists.  Please vote YES on AB359. Society deserves no less.”

Intercept publishes FBI informant manual

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The Intercept has published the FBI’s 2015 Confidential Human Source Policy Guide. It includes policies on recruitment, payments, and international informants: The FBI Gives Itself A Lot of Rope to Pull In Informants.  From the article:

“The classified guidelines reveal:
  • Before approaching a potential informant, agents are encouraged to build a file on that person, using information obtained during an FBI assessment, including derogatory information and information gleaned from other informants. The FBI claims that it seeks derogatory information in order not to be blindsided by its informants’ vulnerabilities, but such material may also be useful in coercing cooperation from otherwise unwilling recruits.
  • FBI agents may use undercover identities to recruit informants, including online. These approaches are not limited by a rule stipulating that agents and informants are allowed no more than five meetings with a target before their activity is subject to supervisory approval as an undercover operation.
  • With permission from supervisors, FBI agents may recruit minors as informants. They may also, with permission from the U.S. Department of Justice, recruit clergy, lawyers, and journalists.
  • Informants may operate in other countries for the FBI, and the FBI guidelines do not require notification to be given to the host countries.”

The FBI’s “immigration relief dangle”

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The FBI has long used immigration as both a carrot and stick to induce people to become informants.  See this story from BuzzFeed last year: Welcome to America, Now Spy on Your Friends.  Now the Intercept has published this article: When Informants Are No Longer Useful, the FBI Can Help Deport Them. It includes new information from  the FBI’s “Confidential Human Source Police Guide”–its manual for handling informants–which uses the phrase “immigration relief dangle” to describe the dynamic.  FBI agents coordinate with immigration officials to identify and pressure potential informants, and then help ICE locate them for deportation when they are no longer useful.  From the article:

“It’s been clear for a decade that the FBI works with ICE to keep informants in the country. What we didn’t know was that the assistance is often contingent and temporary, and that the FBI actively assists ICE in locating informants who are no longer useful so that they may be deported.”

“’This creates a perverse incentive structure, because informants are incentivized to keep themselves valuable,’ said [immigration expert and Stanford lecturer Diala] Shamas. ‘It will further incentivize them to create investigations when there wouldn’t be one otherwise. In the traditional criminal context, the law enforcement community is conscious of the risk that coercing informants increases the likelihood of getting bad intelligence. But in the counterterrorism and intelligence context, this caution has been thrown out the window.'”

The article is by Trevor Aaronson, author of the Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism.

DOJ to investigate Orange County

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The U.S. Department of Justice has announced an investigation–in conjunction with the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Central District of California–into unconstitutional informant practices in Orange County.  This is a welcome and important development.  Below are links to stories, and to the original letter from former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp and U.C. Irvine Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, requesting that DOJ intervene:

Congress to hold hearing on DEA informant program

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This Wednesday, November 30th, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will hold a hearing entitled “Oversight of DEA’s Confidential Source Program.”  The announcement describes the hearing as follows:

PURPOSE:
  • The hearing will examine the recent audits and investigations conducted by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (DOJ OIG) of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Confidential Source (CS) Program. 
  • Topics include the current state of DEA’s oversight and management of its CS program, changes it has made to the program, and DEA’s response to DOJ OIG’s recommendations.  
BACKGROUND:

  • The DEA maintains an extensive and recently expanding CS program. DOJ OIG found deficiencies in DEA’s oversight and management of this vast network of confidential sources dating back to 2005.  
  • These CSs included employees from Amtrak, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), private bus companies, and employees in the parcel delivery industry being paid for information.
  • A September 2016 DOJ OIG audit found that from 2010 to 2015, DEA had 18,000 active CSs, with over 9,000 CSs receiving approximately $237 million in payments from the DEA.  
  • Much of the activity identified by DOJ OIG occurred under the previous DEA Administrator Leonhart who resigned in April 2015 after Chairman Chaffetz, Ranking Member Cummings, and other members of the Oversight Committee released a statement expressing “no confidence” in her ability to manage the DEA.
The U.S. Department of Justice OIG audit can be found in this previous post.