Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

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A witness intimidation crisis in Philadelphia

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WSJ Blog picked up this lengthy story from the Philadelphia Inquirer, documenting rampant witness intimidation, violence, and the inability of city prosecutors to prosecute violent crimes. One witness saw his own written statement to police posted on a wall as a flier, with the following words scribbled on it: “Don’t stand next to this man. You might get shot.” From the Inquirer:

“It’s endemic. People are frightened to death,” said District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham. “We’ve had witness after witness intimidated, threatened, frightened.” And the city cannot guarantee their protection. “That fear, that’s real,” said Jamie Egan, a former city prosecutor. “When people would ask me if I could guarantee their safety, I would say, ‘Unfortunately, I cannot.'” Abraham has long fought for more money to protect and relocate witnesses in criminal cases. For 15 years, she has repeatedly complained, to no avail, that the city’s program was underfunded and failing to meet a crucial need. Local funding for witness relocation is a fraction of the spending in the vaunted federal witness-protection program. Efforts to pump city money into the local program have failed year after year.

Witness intimidation is part and parcel of the more general violence, insecurity, and lack of resources in so many inner city neighborhoods. According to the National Institutes of Justice, witness intimidation is a longstanding problem in poor, high-crime communities like Philadelphia, especially in gang-dominated neighborhoods. Over a decade ago, studies warned about localized violence and witness intimidation in areas of concentrated poverty and crime. Stories like the Inquirer’s suggest that the problem is now even more widespread. As I argue in the book, states need resources comparable to the federal WITSEC program to protect witnesses, particularly poor witnesses who lack resources themselves and may be stuck in violent neighborhoods. As a parent of a murdered young witness mourned in the Inquirer article:

“If you see something, you better look the other way. That’s a sad thing to say to a victim, but I’m the number one candidate saying ‘Don’t tell nothing unless you can take care of yourself, because the city don’t have nothing in place to help you.'”

IRS expands use of informants

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Two fascinating stories from Forbes on the IRS’s expanded Whistleblower Office: Tax Informants are on the Loose, and IRS Ordered to Surrender Informant Documents. In 2006, Congress told the IRS to start paying informants as much as 30% of delinquent taxes collected in big cases, and the scale of snitching has skyrocketed. As Forbes puts it:

The gambit seems to be working very well. The IRS continues to get thousands of small case tips a year. But in fiscal 2009, ended Oct. 30, the IRS Whistleblower Office also logged big case leads on 1,900 taxpayers, up from 1,246 in fiscal 2008, the first full year the new law was in effect. Dozens of these tips involve purported tax losses of $100 million or more. Sure, those are just allegations. But informants “often provide extensive documentation to support their claims,”‘ the Whistleblower Office noted in a report. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, in a separate report, added up all the 2008 tips and found that $65 billion in unreported income was alleged.

Perhaps the most famous case to date involves Bradley Birkenfeld, an employee of the Swiss bank UBS who gave the IRS information on how wealthy Americans were hiding money with his employer. Although Birkenfeld himself faces a 40-month prison sentence, he may be able to keep millions in reward money–another new rule. Again from Forbes:

Before the new law, IRS Whistleblower Officer Director Stephen Whitlock notes, “if you participated in the tax noncompliance–you could have been the accountant doing the ministerial activity–you could be flat-out barred” from a reward. Now such a functionary is eligible for a full reward, even if he is convicted of, say, stealing from the company he squeals on. An informant who “planned and initiated” a tax scheme is still eligible for a reduced award–unless he’s convicted for that planning role.

In other words, the IRS is moving closer to the snitching norm, in which admitted criminals reap benefits from their cooperation. At the same time, the IRS informant program may be running into resistance. In the second story, a federal judge has ordered the IRS to return documents provided by an informant who stole the documents from the company Monex. Apparently the court was not content to let the government decide which stolen Monex documents were privileged, although the government is likely to get many of the documents back in the end. As Forbes frames the problem, “How far can the government go in using information from an insider and what should be the procedures for handling that information?” As I explain in the book, this concern for the privacy and rights of criminal targets–and the concomitant restrictions on informant use–is more characteristic of white collar investigations in which defendants tend to be well-resourced and well-defended, and is notably lacking in the street- and drug-enforcement arena.

Infamous “fake-drug scandal” informant re-convicted in Dallas

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In 2001 in Dallas, Channel 8 TV and the Dallas Morning News revealed how a ring of police and their paid narcotics informants planted fake drugs (gypsum) on innocent Latino immigrants in order to inflate department drug bust statistics. Many of those innocent victims were deported before the scam was discovered. Now the main informant in that ring–Enrique Martinez Alonso–has been convicted again, this time for counterfeiting. See this post from GritsforBreakfast for an overview; here’s the story from the Dallas News. This story is a classic example of how snitches can leverage cooperation to avoid punishment for ongoing serious crimes. Not only did the six informants led by Alonso earn $440,000 for their roles in the fake drug scandal, but Alonso’s subsequent criminal sentences were drastically reduced because of his cooperation with authorities–he served five years before being deported in 2007, while his brother received a 20-year sentence. As Grits points out:

Enrique was always portrayed by the media and officialdom as the main informant working with Delapaz (and the seven other officers who allegedly faked field tests claiming Alonso’s drugs were real), so it’s somewhat shocking to learn he received a sentence only 25% of his brother’s. That’s a steep discount for his second stint as an informant – this time against his co-conspirators and police “handlers.” This fellow keeps being compensated for snitching on others – by Dallas police, by the feds – even when he appears to be at the center of the criminal activity in question.

Fernando Bermudez exonerated–informant found to have lied

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Cleared of murder charges after serving 18 years, Fernando Bermudez was freed on Friday. See NYT story here and my

previous post. Four witnesses recanted their testimony, stating that they had been pressured by the government into identifying Mr. Bermudez as the shooter. The main witness, Efraim Lopez, testified falsely under a cooperation agreement guaranteeing that he would not be charged with any crimes, even though he was centrally involved in the shooting. Judge Cataldo concluded that the government either knew or should have known Lopez was lying. Judge Cataldo’s opinion is available here. Although the government concedes that its main witness Lopez perjured himself at trial, it has announced that it intends to appeal.