Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Incentives & Payments

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.

Massachusetts Supreme Court disapproves of prosecutorial rewards to witnesses

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Two witnesses in Wayne Miranda’s murder trial received $2000 each from the Chamber of Commerce because their testimony assisted in producing a guilty verdict. As the Boston Globe writes, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, while approving such witness reward programs generally, has ruled that prosecutors cannot participate in them or help witnesses get rewards when those rewards are contingent on convictions. Commonwealth v. Wayne Miranda, SJC-10568. From the Court’s opinion:

We recognize that, to prove the crime charged, prosecutors often need to procure the cooperation and truthful information or testimony of reluctant witnesses. The interests of justice, however, are not well served when a witness’s reward is contingent on the conviction of a defendant, rather than the provision of truthful information or testimony.

While the Massachusetts Supreme Court should be lauded for its ethical concern, its decision is somewhat ironic. Prosecutors routinely provide far greater benefits to criminal informant witnesses, in the form of liberty and leniency, than a few thousand dollars. In many jurisdictions, these rewards can be contigent on conviction. And even when the rewards are not expressly contingent on conviction, every attorney and informant knows that a witness in a successful conviction is more likely to get rewarded.
This is why Professor George Harris [author of Testimony for Sale: The Law and Ethics of Snitches and Experts, 28 Pepp. L. Rev. 1 (2000)], and I have recommended leveling the playing field by creating defense informants, i.e. rewards for informants who come forward with information that might help the defense rather than the prosecution. As it currently stands, an offender with information helpful to the defense cannot expect any benefits–only the government can give those. This lopsided arrangement is, as the Massachusetts Supreme Court pointed out, not in the interests of accuracy or justice.

What goes around: violent snitch sentenced for shooting witness

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When someone is a “longtime police informant,” as the Seattle Post Intelligencer described Devaughn Dorsey, it means that person has had a long-term relationship with police and/or prosecutors in which the government has ignored his crimes, or lessened his punishment, in exchange for information. When that person also happens to be “one of Seattle’s most violent criminals . . . [who] has shot no fewer than eight people since 1990,” it illustrates the most troubling aspect of criminal informant use–that the government is tolerating crime from its information sources in pursuit of new cases. See this previous post —Violent robber-snitch formed new home invasion gang–discussing the dilemma of informants who continue to commit crime while working for the government.

Informant lawsuit against FBI offers window into messy world of anti-terrorism

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By the end of his stint working for the FBI, informant Craig Monteilh was earning over $11,000 a month to secretly film and record worshippers at the Islamic Center of Irvine, California. Monteilh, who has a lengthy rap sheet of his own, is now suing the FBI for allegedly instructing him to plead guilty to criminal charges of grand theft so as to maintain his cover. The Associated Press report on Monteilh’s lawsuit reveals details of the informant’s world that the public rarely gets to see, particularly the government’s ability to use private individuals/informants to obtain information that the government would otherwise need evidence of wrongdoing and a warrant to obtain: US Judge gives informant time to amend FBI lawsuit. From the story:

In court papers and his ACLU declaration, Monteilh says he was asked to work as an informant for local law enforcement in 2004, when he became friendly with some police officers in a local gym. By 2006, he was promoted to the FBI’s counterterrorism operations. Monteilh alleges he gathered phone numbers and contact information for hundreds of Muslim-Americans and recorded thousands of hours of conversation using a device on his key fob or cell phone during his stint with the FBI. His said his handlers told him to work out with Muslims at gyms, asked him to get codes for security systems so they could enter mosques at night and encouraged him to ask mosque members about “jihad” and supporting terrorist operations abroad. In June 2007, however, mosque members became suspicious of Monteilh and requested a restraining order, saying that he had spoken repeatedly about engaging in jihad.