Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Drug-related

FOX on the informant market

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Here’s a general story that ran yesterday on FOX in Memphis, Tennessee– Informants Cashing in on Snitching. The piece focuses on informants, particularly drug informants, who earn money as well as leniency for their own offenses, and it highlights the informality and lack of rules that characterize the world of paid criminal snitching. From the story:

“Most of the informants we develop, are involved in criminal activity. You get your best information from people who have knowledge of the crimes or are being involved in committing the crimes,” said [Sgt. Clay] Aitken [of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office.] Records on the number of informants and what they’re paid is not made public by the sheriff’s office. Aitken says informants are paid with seized drug money, not taxpayers’ dollars. “I’ve seen informants get paid anywhere from $50 to thousands of dollars. But there’s no set rate or set fee,” said Aitken.

One of [the reporter’s] law enforcement sources who has worked directly with informants, says he’s personally seen a Mid-South informant get handed $50,000 cash for one tip that led to a huge drug bust but that’s nothing compared to what the Feds can offer and he says informants have been known to shop their information around selling it to the highest bidder.

David Headley: another drug/terrorism informant works both sides

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According to the New York Times, David Headley, drug-dealer-turned-informant-turned-terrorist, was working for the DEA while collaborating with Pakistani terrorists who eventually attacked Mumbai, India in 2008. Headley has pleaded guilty to his role in that attack, and is currently cooperating with the government in an effort to avoid the death penalty. Story here: DEA Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning. Part of India’s anger over the incident stems from the fact that the DEA had been warned repeatedly by several people who knew Headley that he sympathized with terrorist groups, but, ignoring the warnings, the DEA nevertheless persuaded a court to take Headley off probation and sent him to Pakistan in 2001. From the Times:

In recent weeks, United States government officials have begun to acknowledge that Mr. Headley’s path from American informant to transnational terrorist illustrates the breakdowns and miscommunications that have bedeviled them since the Sept. 11 attacks. Warnings about his radicalism were apparently not shared with the drug agency that made use of his ties in Pakistan.

The director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., began an investigation into Mr. Headley’s government connections after reports last month that two of the former drug dealer’s ex-wives had gone to American authorities between 2005 and 2008, before the Mumbai attacks, to say they feared he was plotting with terrorists. Combined with the earlier warning from the former girlfriend, three of the women in Mr. Headley’s life reported his ties to terrorists, only to have those warnings dismissed.

An examination of Mr. Headley’s story shows that his government ties ran far deeper and longer than previously known. One senior American official knowledgeable about the case said he believed that Mr. Headley was a D.E.A. informant until at least 2003, meaning that he was talking to American agencies even as he was learning to deal with explosives and small arms in terrorist training camps.

An NPR story this morning explains the breakdown in official communication by noting that the DEA would have been protective of its informant and unlikely to share his identity with other agencies, Warnings Overlooked in Case of American Tied to Mumbai Attacks. But this is only part of the story. As the Times points out, the DEA ignored the warnings precisely because Headley was a long time and valuable informant. This is the same blindspot that earlier this year led CIA officials to bring a prized informant to a base in Afghanistan, only to see him turn suicide bomber — see Afghan suicide bomber was informant-double-agent.

This debacle illustrates the significant costs of the criminal informant compromise. First, informants avoid punishment for their own crimes–Headley served less than two years in prison although he could have faced up to nine years for distributing 15 kilograms of heroin. Second, as the government grows increasingly reliant on its criminal sources, officials come to tolerate informant crime, double-dealing and inaccuracy as a routine part of the compromise. Because the dominant culture of informant management is one of secrecy, even as between government agencies, this further weakens the process of intelligence-gathering, information-sharing, and law enforcement. Since the government maintains that it cannot conduct the war on terror without informants, it is time to rethink the rules of this risky public policy.

Texas requires corroboration for informant witnesses

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Perhaps as a result of these sorts of debacles, Infamous fake drug scandal in Dallas, Of Experts and Snitches, Texas has passed some good corroboration legislation restricting the use of drug informants and jailhouse snitches. Last year, it passed this law requiring corroboration for jailhouse snitches:

A defendant may not be convicted of an offense on the testimony of a person to whom the defendant made a statement against the defendant’s interest during a time when the person was imprisoned or confined in the same correctional facility as the defendant unless the testimony is corroborated by other evidence tending to connect the defendant with the offense committed. Tex. Code. Crim. Pro. art. 38-075

Article 38-141 similarly requires corroboration before a drug informant can testify. These are steps in the right direction, although they are only partial solutions to the lying snitch problem. The key to informant unreliability is not whether the informant is involved in drugs or in jail, but whether he expects a benefit and therefore has a motivation to lie. Nebraska takes the right approach in this regard by defining “informant” to include “any criminal suspect, whether or not he is detained or incarcerated, who received a deal, promise, inducement or benefit.” Neb. Rev. Stat. 29-1929. In defining informant broadly, the Nebraska legislature reasoned that “there is a compelling state interest in providing safeguards against the admission of testimony the reliability of which may be or has been compromised through improper inducements.”

Young informant commits suicide

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A significant problem that has not yet received sufficient attention: protecting young and vulnerable informants. This story in the Missoulian is about how police handled Colton Peterson, a suicidal 21-year-old who was working for them as a drug informant: “Family believes son’s suicide partly caused by law enforcement’s conscription as an informant.” The story raises some of the same issues that caused Florida to pass “Rachel’s law” after 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman was killed while working as an informant. See these previous posts: “Florida’s ‘Rachel’s Law’ offers some protection for informants” and “Recruiting new informants.” Under Florida’s new law, police must now consider certain minimum factors before recruiting a person as an informant, including the person’s “age and maturity,” and “whether the person has shown any indication of emotional instability.” My deepest condolences to Colton’s parents, Juliena Darling and Frank Peterson.

At least five imprisoned based on lying drug informant

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Watch this video news clip from WINK-TV News (an ABC affiliate) in Florida: “Convicted felon: lying confidential informant sent me to prison.” The informant, Shakira Redding, admitted that she set up innocent people by fabricating drug deals: she’d buy drugs in advance and hide them on her body to provide to the drug task force as “evidence” after the alleged deals. The government had promised her money, a home, and custody of her children if she provided incriminating evidence against others. Romill Blandin was one of Redding’s innocent targets who spent 20 months in prison after Redding made a video of a man in a car that she claimed was Blandin, and then picked Blandin out of a line-up. Tellingly, Blandin never saw the video before he pled guilty–his public defender told him that he couldn’t see it unless he went to trial and that his criminal record made it likely that the jury would convict him. He chose to plead guilty instead of risking a longer sentence.

This story is an almost exact replay of the Hearne, Texas debacle in which a confidential informant working for the local drug task force set up dozens of innocent African Americans. The Hearne case was the subject of the movie “American Violet,” and an ACLU lawsuit. Here’s the description from the book’s introduction:

In the economically troubled town of Hearne, Texas, 27-year-old criminal informant Derrick Megress wreaked havoc. In November, 2000, a federally-funded drug task force swept through the town arresting twenty-eight people, mostly residents of the Columbus Village public housing project. Megress, a suicidal former drug dealer on probation facing new burglary charges, had cut a deal with the local prosecutor. If he produced at least 20 arrests, Megress’s new charges would be dropped. He’d also earn $100 for every person he helped bust. One of his innocent victims was waitress Regina Kelly, mother of four, who steadfastly refused to plead guilty and take a deal for probation even as she sat in jail for weeks. Another target, Detra Tindle, was actually in the hospital giving birth at the time that Megress alleged that she had sold him drugs. A lie detector test finally revealed that Megress had lied–mixing flour and baking soda with small amounts of cocaine to fabricate evidence of drug deals. Charges against the remaining Hearne suspects were dropped, although several had already pleaded guilty.

Such stories are not aberrations; drug task forces are large-scale users of criminal informants in which the risks of fabrication are high. Massachusetts, for example, reports that in 2005-2006 its federally-funded drug taskforces relied on over 2000 confidential informants who made 45 percent of the taskforces’ controlled buys.