On Thursday, January 21, I’ll be on the KPFA Morning Show at 8:00 a.m. (you can listen here) and Forum on KQED at 10:00 a.m. (here). On Friday, I’m speaking at the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice at Boalt Hall.
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New developments in federal witness intimidation legislation
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s witness intimidation series (previous post here) triggered a congressional hearing. You can read the testimonies here, including criticism of the series for exaggerating the extent of the problem. See testimony of Michael Coard. Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) subsequently called for a law that would make witness intimidation a federal offense; witness intimidation is already a state crime. Story here. In a similar development, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) introduced the Witness Security and Protection Grant Program Act of 2009, to provide assistance to state and local witness protection programs. Press release here. More indications that the law of informant use will look very different a few years from now.
Patt Morrison Show and L.A. Times investigative reporter Ted Rohrlich
Last week I did the Patt Morrison Show on KPCC (you can listen here), with prize-winning former L.A.Times investigative reporter Ted Rohrlich. Over the years he’s done some great stories on informants. For example, in Trading Lies for Freedom, Rohrlich reported on several professional jailhouse snitches in the Los Angeles County jail system, including the now-infamous Leslie Vernon White of 60 Minutes fame. The piece describes the “variety of techniques” used by snitches to fabricate confessions:
To gather the information that will make a confession appear plausible, informants have used a variety of techniques, ranging from the artful to the crude. Some informants, for example, have carefully maintained files of newspaper and magazine articles on sensational criminal cases, or have stolen legal documents from the cells of other inmates. They have conned fellow prisoners, even those who have insisted on their innocence, into giving up key details of the cases against them. Some have pretended to be jailhouse lawyers offering free advice. Others merely have asked why someone is in jail, then transformed the most sincere protestations of innocence into admissions of guilt. Informants have purchased information from other informants for money, candy or cigarettes. Some informants have testified that they received inside information from police.
In Authorities Go Fishing for Jailhouse Confessions, Rohrlich described how some detectives purposefully placed suspects in the LA jail “snitch tank,” hoping that the resident informants would come up with incriminating confessions. The story begins as follows:
The homicide detective thought he knew the identity of a murderer but couldn’t prove it. To make his case, he wanted a confession. But his suspect wouldn’t talk. Los Angeles Police Detective Philip Sowers did what one prosecutor said a lot of detectives do. He turned to the informant tank at Los Angeles County Jail for help. Sowers arranged for jailers to place his suspect, who was not an informant, in the special section of the jail reserved for informants — inmates who habitually tell police that other inmates have confessed to murders or other serious crimes. Within days, Sowers had reports from four informants, known to detectives as “friendlies,” that his suspect had confessed.
Finally, Rohrlich wrote a more recent piece on the Rampart scandal, entitled Scandal Shows Why Innocent Plead Guilty. This is a particularly important article because it describes a common but nearly invisible problem in the criminal system: how the plea bargaining process pressures innocent people to plead guilty.
Joseph Jones had quite a choice. He could plead guilty to selling drugs he had not sold and serve eight years in prison. Or he could risk being convicted at trial and, as a three-time loser, be sentenced to life. Ex-felon Miguel Hernandez was offered a similarly absurd “break.” He could give up 16 months of his life by pleading guilty to possessing a weapon he had never had. Or he could demand a trial and face the possibility of four or more years in prison. In offering criminal defendants these kinds of Hobson’s choices, prosecutors and judges did not set out to induce innocent men to plead guilty–although that is what they did. The prosecutors and judges merely accepted the word of Los Angeles police that the men were guilty.
While this piece tells the story of innocent people who pled guilty because police gave false information, a similar dynamic is at work when innocent people are confronted with false information from a snitch.
Each of these articles is important in its own right, shedding light on specific criminal justice failures. They also remind us that journalism plays a crucial role in maintaining the accountability of a criminal process that rarely volunteers information about its own mistakes.
London police resist disclosing snitch payments
The London Daily News reports that Scotland Yard may be facing contempt of court for refusing to reveal how much it spends on snitches. Story here. The paper reports that the city spends approximately $4 million a year to pay informants. While U.S. governments do not reveal such figures either, a study by the National Law Journal concluded that in 1993, federal agencies paid their confidential informants $97 million.
New Jersey Record: Right-wing radio host was an FBI informant
The New Jersey Record reports that ultra-right-wing radio host/blogger Hal Turner worked for over five years for the FBI. Turner was tried last month for threatening three federal appellate judges in Chicago: Judges Posner, Easterbrook, and Bauer. Turner’s case ended in a mistrial and he is scheduled to be retried in March. According to the Record, Turner was paid and coached by the FBI while he broadcast neo-Nazi and white supremacy views over the radio and internet:
As Turner took to his radio show and blog to say that those who opposed his extremist views deserve to die, he received thousands of dollars from the FBI to report on such groups as the Aryan Nations and the white supremacist National Alliance, and even a member of the Blue Eyed Devils skinhead punk band. Later, he was sent undercover to Brazil where he reported a plot to send non-military supplies to anti-American Iraqi resistance fighters. Sometimes he signed “Valhalla” on his FBI payment receipts instead of his own name.
His dual life of shock jock and informant offers a window into the murky realm of domestic intelligence in the years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks — in particular, the difficult choices for the FBI in penetrating controversial fringe groups with equally controversial informants. In interviews, he said the FBI coached him to make racist, anti-Semitic and other threatening statements and now he feels double-crossed by the bureau after his arrest. The documents reviewed by The Record, however, show repeated instances of federal agents admonishing Turner for his extremism.
Government support for active informants often creates this kind of chicken-and-egg problem. It is hard to know whether the informants would have committed their new offenses if they hadn’t felt protected or authorized by the government. Cooperating drug dealers, for example, often assert that their government handlers condone their ongoing illegal activities. Similarly, the Record reports that Turner’s threatening rhetoric towards the federal bench was affected, at least in his mind, by his relationship with the FBI:
Turner blames the FBI, saying that while agents never said he could threaten judges, they coached him on the limits of what he could say. As a result, Turner said he felt he had wide latitude. “I was given specific instructions,” he said.