Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Dynamics of Snitching

Derrion Albert’s death, “Stop Snitching,” and people’s reluctance to talk to police

by

Yesterday on CNN, Anderson Cooper reported on the terrible story of 16-year-old Derrion Albert who was beaten to death by four other teenagers in Chicago. The beating was captured on videotape–story here. Four people have been charged so far. Police Superintendant Jody Weis told Cooper that no one has come forward to identify three other potential perpetrators, even though numerous people witnessed the event. Weis stated, “We are literally getting killed by this code of silence, this no-snitching rule. We’ve worked hard to overcome it.” Cooper responded as follows:

This is something we focused on a lot on this program over the years. I did a piece on 60 Minutes about it as well. This whole stop snitching effort, rappers are telling people don’t be a snitch. And now the definition of a snitch is not just somebody who is involved in a crime and tries to rat out someone else they were involved with. Now there’s this horrible definition of being a snitch is anybody who comes forward and talks about a crime they’ve seen. That’s just the mentality that cannot be tolerated.

“Stop snitching” is an important phenomenon in urban criminal law enforcement; it is also deeper than comments like Cooper’s suggest, which is why I devote an entire chapter of the book to it. In a nutshell, “stop snitching” is the legacy of three related trends: drug enforcement’s heavy use of criminal snitches, increased gang violence against witnesses, and decades of mistrust between police and poor minority communities. While it is true that rappers often write songs that say “don’t snitch,” rap music should not be blamed for the fact that law-abiding residents of high-crime inner city neighborhoods are often too afraid of retaliation and/or too wary of police to report crimes. Here is an excerpt from the book:

The “stop snitching” phenomenon turns out to be complex, deep-seated, and long-standing. It did not begin with a DVD or a rap song, nor will it end when “stop snitching” t-shirts go out of style. It is simultaneously a criminal code of the street, a reflection of widespread communal distrust of police, as well as, more recently, a tool of intimidation against civilian witnesses. While the phenomenon was born in the penal system, it has spread beyond its criminal roots, a product of the multifaceted challenges of urban crime, gang violence, race, drugs, and policing through criminal informants.

To explain “stop snitching” is not to condone it–the world would be a better place if Chicago residents had the kind of relationship with police that would promote cooperation and information-sharing. But it is also important to give Chicagoans more credit–like so many people in cities such as Baltimore or Newark or Los Angeles, their reluctance to call police often stems from very real personal as well as historical experiences.

New Yorker Article–Of Experts and Snitches

by

In this extensive New Yorker article, reporter David Grann tells the story of how Texas prosecuted and executed Cameron Todd Willingham for the alleged arson murder of his three children. Willingham always insisted on his innocence, and recent forensic evidence indicates that the fire was in fact an accident. A Texas government commission is reviewing the case–as Grann puts it, if the commission concludes that Willingham did not set the fire, “Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the ‘execution of a legally and factually innocent person.'”

There were two controversial kinds of evidence used at Willingham’s trial. The first and most important was the state expert’s opinion that the fire was intentionally set. The second was the testimony of Johnny Webb, a jailhouse snitch with drug and mental health problems, who was hoping to “get time cut” off his robbery and forgery charges and who testified that Willingham confessed to him. Eight years after the trial, in 2000, Webb recanted his testimony, but within months he recanted again. Here are a few excerpts from the story describing Webb.

Not long after Willingham’s arrest, authorities received a message from a prison inmate named Johnny Webb, who was in the same jail as Willingham. Webb alleged that Willingham had confessed to him . . . During Willingham’s trial, another inmate planned to testify that he had overheard Webb saying to another prisoner that he was hoping to “get time cut,” but the testimony was ruled inadmissible, because it was hearsay. . . . Years later, in 2009, reporter David Grann interviewed Webb. After Grann pressed him, Webb]said, “It’s very possible I misunderstood what he Willingham said.” Since the trial, Webb has been given an additional diagnosis, bipolar disorder. “Being locked up in that little cell makes you kind of crazy,” he said. “My memory is in bits and pieces. I was on a lot of medication at the time. Everyone knew that.” He paused, then said, “The statute of limitations has run out on perjury, hasn’t it?”

This is a good example of how jailhouse informant testimony can not only create bad cases but bolster weak ones. Because of the general understanding in the criminal system that informants get a break, informants may reach out to the government to offer testimony, making bad cases look better. In other words, the culture of snitching generates evidentiary “filler,” even if the government is not actively looking for any.

The New Yorker story is centrally about the role of bad forensic expertise, and it highlights similarities between experts and informants. Both are paid and controlled by one side, both have a stake in the outcome, and both offer testimony that is difficult to cross examine or rebut. Professor George Harris wrote an article on these similiarities entitled “Testimony for Sale: The Law and Ethics of Snitches and Experts,” in Pepperdine Law Review, in which he argues that experts and snitches alike should be subject to more rigorous controls and adversarial testing. In particular, he offers a proposal, on which I expand in my book, to create “defense informants,” i.e. informants who could testify for defendants and receive the same kind of benefits that informants can now receive only by testifying for the prosecution.

No Special Treatment for Madoff Cooperator

by

The Wall Street Journal Law blog posts here that U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan has refused to let cooperator Frank DiPascali out on bail, even though DiPascali has pled guilty and is helping the government unravel the Madoff scheme. The reason this is newsworthy is that everyone expects courts to treat cooperators well, even when they’ve committed major crimes (DiPascali’s crimes include helping Madoff, lying under oath to SEC investigators, and forging documents–he faces 125 years in prison). In other words, Judge Sullivan is the exception that illustrates the rule. It is more typical for prosecutors and courts to quietly accommodate cooperators–keeping them out on bail, dropping charges, and even helping them with criminal cases in other jurisdictions. In my view, and as I argue in my book, these commonplace accommodations and the culture of cooperation more generally have skewed the criminal system’s approach to culpability. Offenders are evaluated as much for their usefulness as their wrongdoing, and even the most heinous crimes have become opportunities for negotiation. For a haunting example, read this story in the Washington Times entitled Drug Dealer Avoids Jail in Daughter’s Killing, about a drug informant who avoided punishment for the death of his daughter who died of, among other things, a fractured skull and severe malnurishment.

Police Internally Split on Confidentiality Issue

by

Thanks to Scott Henson from Grits For Breakfast for passing along this important story on a battle raging within the St. Louis police department. Rank-and-file police are refusing to provide information about their snitches to their own police supervisors and city police officials. Here’s an excerpt:

Worried about liars in their ranks, city police officials are demanding that up to 20 officers tell bosses details about their confidential informers. But the St. Louis Police Officers Association has won a temporary restraining order to block the inquiry, pending a hearing in court next week. The organization says the probe would jeopardize informers’ lives, officers’ careers and public safety. At issue is whether officers have attributed fabricated information to confidential informers to obtain search and arrest warrants. Police brass acknowledge in court filings that they believe “one or more” officers “have included false information in affidavits” for warrants, and say the investigation is aimed at stopping “the concerns of police abuse and violation of civil rights.”

Ironically, one of the officers’ arguments against holding a public hearing is that if informants are called to testify, they will lie. These being the very same informants that police rely on to get the warrants in the first place.

The fact that street cops are at odds with their own police officials on this question reveals some deep dynamics about snitching, including what I call the culture of secrecy surrounding the entire practice. Police and their informants are heavily dependent on one another–police need information while offenders need protection against punishment. Police will often go a long way to protect their sources, famously from defendants and courts, but often from prosecutors and even sometimes from their own police supervisors. This does not mean that police handlers are necessarily corrupt: handling criminal informants inherently means doing unsavory things like ignoring their crimes, bending the rules, sometimes providing addicts with cash for drugs. However, the culture of secrecy makes illegal police conduct that much easier. See this NYT story on Brooklyn police who supplied their informants with drugs. Kudos to the St. Louis police officials who are trying to make the process more accountable and transparent.

Committing Crime While Working for the Government

by

TalkLeft picked up on this story about a Secret Service informant who, while assisting the government, launched one of the largest identity theft operations in U.S. history. Back in 2003, Albert Gonzalez avoided indictment for identity fraud by becoming a snitch; his cooperation resulted in the dismantling of a significant identity theft ring of which he appeared to be the ringleader. He kept on with his criminal activities, however, apparently even using his government connections to warn other hackers.

This is simply one of the biggest problems with informant use: the fact that offenders can use active cooperation not only to avoid punishment but to continue offending. It is a problem inherent in snitching: the most useful informants are typically the most active criminals, so the government has to tolerate some amount of criminality in exchange for information about and access to criminal activities. The scale of the phenomenon ranges: from the small (addicts who stay on the street by providing information to police) to the large (drug dealers who remain in operation by informing on colleagues and competitors) to the mind-boggling (terrorists who provide information to the U.S. government while participating in new terrorist activities). In my book I write extensively about the harm that this practice can cause in high-crime urban communities in particular. When law enforcement tolerates crimes committed by cooperating offenders, whether it is drug use, property crimes, or violence, the neighborhoods in which those offenders live have to put up with it.