Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

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“Snitch” visa often promised but rarely given

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The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) produced this report “Shining a Light on the “S” Visa: A Long History of Unfulfilled Promises and Bureaucratic Red Tape.” An S-visa, sometimes referred to as a “snitch visa,” offers temporary residency status to immigrants who “are willing to supply…critical reliable information” to U.S. law enforcement. 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(15)(S).

The NACDL report reveals how often the government uses the S-visa to entice immigrants into becoming informants, sometimes at great risk to themselves and their families, even though almost none ever actually receive the visa. The phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the immigration relief “dangle.” See also this story from the Intercept: “Federal Informants are Often Promised Visas. They Rarely Materialize.”

Troy Howlett’s mother sues Virginia police for wrongful death

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In 2018, police in Hopewell, Virginia, pressured Troy Howlett into becoming a drug informant, sitting by his hospital bed as he recovered from an overdose. Months later he died from a fentanyl overdose. His mother, Donna Watson, filed a wrongful death claim against the police, arguing that with full knowledge of Troy’s addiction they coerced him into buying drugs that exposed him to continued drug use and a high risk of overdose. Her case was initially dismissed by the court; it is currently on appeal. For indepth coverage see this story from WTVR, “Her son was a police informant. She blames them for his death,” and this piece from The New Republic: “Her Son Needed Help. First, He Had to Help the Police.”

The New Republic also interviewed another former Hopewell informant. The father of her child was facing criminal charges and police came to her with a deal: if she worked for them, it could help reduce his sentence. Pregnant and with a history of substance abuse of her own, she worked for police for a month and relapsed.

For more stories about the widespread harms to vulnerable informants, see post about Matthew Klaus who died of an overdose while working for police, and also How police turn teens into informants.

Empirical study on federal drug cooperation

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Interesting new law review article on how federal defense attorneys (mostly CJA panel attorneys) perceive cooperation rates and opportunities for their (mostly) drug clients: Why Criminal Defendants Cooperate: The Defense Attorney’s Perspective. The authors surveyed defense counsel in three large federal districts (SDNY, EDPA, EDVA) and found, unsurprisingly, that cooperation is largely driven by the promise of sentencing benefits — precisely what federal mandatory minimums and the US Sentencing Guidelines are designed to do.

Perhaps more surprisingly, when the authors asked defense attorneys whether “cooperation agreements are the product of a fair process,” on a scale from 1 (completely disagree) to 9 (completely agree), the “average rating [was] 3.17. Such a low average indicates that federal defense attorneys who participated in this study felt that cooperation agreements are not the product of a fair process.” Even former prosecutors in the sample only gave the process 4 out of 9 for fairness. Recall that this study was performed in one of the most regulated, transparent, and lawyered arenas of cooperation: by hypothesis all the defendants in these cases were represented by experienced counsel who negotiated formal cooperation deals on their behalf in the relatively well-resourced elite space of the federal judiciary. Just imagine how much more unfair the cooperation process gets where police and prosecutors pressure vulnerable, unrepresented suspects to cooperate informally. For some particularly egregious examples, see this prior post: How police turn teens into informants.

Did a Boston detective have an affair with an informant to get info on her fiance?

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The Boston Globe reports on a detective who initiated an affair with a woman as part of his covert drug investigation of her boyfriend: An alleged drug trafficker, a detective trying to take him down, and the woman caught in the middle. Carly Medeiros has filed an affidavit alleging that Detective Jared Lucas lured her into an intimate relationship so that he could gather evidence against her fiance Steven Ortiz, without her consent or knowledge. From the story:

Medeiros claims she was sleeping with Lucas while he was investigating Ortiz, and that she had unwittingly become his confidential informant. During their relationship, she alleges, he was using information gleaned from her to help launch an investigation that now could send Ortiz to prison for years. . . . [S]he is adamant that she never agreed to serve as an informant against Ortiz or signed any paperwork saying as much.

Violent FBI informant infiltrates Denver’s racial justice movement

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From Trevor Aaronson at the Intercept, this profile of an informant used by the FBI to infiltrate, record, provide weapons to, and incite violence by Black activists in Denver: The Snitch in the Silver Hearse. Michael Windecker — who had prior convictions for sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl and weapons charges — was paid over $20,000 during the summer of 2020 at the height of Denver protests against the killings of George Floyd and Elijah McClain. Among other astounding things, Windecker drove an activist to the personal home of Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (who was overseeing the prosecution of the police and paramedics who killed McClain) where Windecker affirmatively encouraged the activist to kill Weiser. The activist refused.

The FBI has a long sordid history of using informants to infiltrate and disrupt progressive political groups. See previous posts here. For more history, see Elizabeth Hinton, The Unsettling Message of Judas and the Black Messiah in The Atlantic, and Gary Marx’s classic book, Undercover.