Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Informant Crime

Violent robber-snitch formed new home invasion gang

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Thanks to Grits for Breakfast for this story from the Dallas Morning News:

A confessed robber out on bond after he masterminded a series of violent North Texas home invasions apparently formed a new gang and went right back to his old ways.

In February 2008, William Sedric Autrey reached a plea deal with prosecutors and agreed to work as an undercover informant against others in a gang believed responsible for dozens of home invasions and burglaries between 2005 and 2008.

He was out on bond for almost two years, after negotiating a plea deal to ensure he would not spend more than 15 years behind bars. Authorities say that while he was free, Autrey, 41, formed a new gang that burst into houses, exchanged gunfire with a Dallas homeowner and burglarized and robbed almost two dozen homes around the area since November.

By now the story of criminal informants who continue to commit crimes while working for the government is depressingly familiar news; see, for example, these posts: Killer FBI Informant, and House of Death informant and Committing Crime While Working for the Government. Ongoing crime is an inherent feature of the snitching phenomenon, at least in the U.S. (some countries formally restrict their governments’ authority to tolerate informant crime, but the U.S. is not yet one of them.) Accordingly, we need to figure out whether snitching is worth it. Do we solve more crimes than we permit with these deals? When criminal informants re-offend, can we tell the victims that their suffering produced a greater good? In Dallas, the prosecutor said that Autrey “‘cooperated and helped get indictments on cases that involved hundreds of thousands of dollars’ in mortgage fraud, student loan fraud and other white-collar crimes. He also said that Autrey continued to work with authorities on violent crimes, including some home invasion robberies committed by other people.” Is that worth the dozens of robberies that Autrey continued to commit, including one in which robbers shot at a homeowner, and another in which they tied up a 15-year-old girl?

We can’t have a full public debate about these questions because the government doesn’t produce the data–we don’t know how many crimes informants commit and solve. This is a central reason why I argue that data collection and transparency reforms are so fundamental. As I wrote in the book’s introduction:

“The most important [snitching reform] is the most difficult: changing the culture of secrecy and deregulation that permits informants and officials alike to bend rules, evade accountability, and operate in secret. It is this culture that fosters snitching’s worst dangers: wrongful convictions, unchecked criminal behavior, official corruption, public deception, and the weakened legitimacy of the criminal process in the eyes of its constituents. It is also the feature that prevents us from addressing the ultimate public policy questions with clarity. The system currently handles the problem by asking us to accept on faith that unregulated snitching is worth its risks, without either demonstrating its full benefits or revealing its true costs. For a public policy of this far-reaching importance, such faith is not enough.”

48 Hours report on killer FBI informant

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CBS/48 Hours ran this special investigative report on serial killer-FBI informant Scott Kimball. Kimball–a long-time felon–was sharing a prison cell and saw a photo of his cellmate’s girlfriend, Jennifer Marcum. Kimball concocted a story about a murder-for-hire scheme in order to secure his own release, and then–while working for the FBI as an informant–proceeded to murder Marcum and at least two other women. When Marcum’s parents approached the FBI with their suspicions, Kimball’s FBI handler dismissed them. This dynamic is one of the major dangers of informant reliance: not only was Kimball able to use his status as a jailhouse snitch to gain release based on fabricated evidence, but his snitch status and relationship with the government protected him, at least initially, from investigation.

This story reveals, among other things, that there are no clear lines between jailhouse snitches and working informants–one can morph into another and, all too often, take the government along for the ride. This fact should influence those states–including California, Illinois, and Texas, to name but a few– that are considering jailhouse snitch reforms. The same concerns about unreliability and criminal conduct are present whenever any criminal informant–in or out of jail–trades information in order to escape punishment for his own crimes.

Snitches killing snitches

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Here’s a story of violent irony. Last Friday, two young New Jersey women were sentenced for participating in the execution of a friend–Latyria Nealy–because the gang to which all three women belonged thought Nealy might be snitching. Having lured Nealy to her death on suspicion of being a snitch, one of the women, Nikki Moore, then became an informant herself, providing “significant, extensive, and comprehensive” cooperation which earned her two years off her 12-year sentence. The other defendant apparently also cooperated in some fashion but did not get any credit. Story here: Pair Sentenced in Gang Execution: Asbury Park Woman Killed for being a ‘Snitch’. The irony, of course, lies in the cycle of violence in which people work off their sentences for killing suspected informants by becoming informants themselves. The deeper challenge is helping young people surrounded by crime who are caught in the middle–between violent gangs that threaten those who talk, and a criminal system that punishes those who remain silent.

The tangled web of informant and handler

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While we may never know what actually happened between DEA Agent Lee Lucas and his informant Jerrell Bray–a hazardous partnership that rocked Cleveland for the last few years– their story reveals the many dangers that arise when law enforcement hitches its wagon to criminal snitches. In 2007, the Cleveland Plain Dealer began extensive reporting on allegations that Bray, a convicted killer and drug dealer, was using his relationship to the DEA to frame rivals and innocent people and that Agent Lucas had lied to make cases. Eventually, over a dozen convictions were reversed, including those of people who pleaded guilty. Story here. Bray was convicted of perjury and is currently serving 14 years; Agent Lucas was prosecuted for perjury and obstruction of justice. Last month, a jury acquitted Agent Lucas of all 18 charges. Story here. Law enforcement agents are rarely prosecuted for relying on bad informants, so the Plain Dealer’s coverage offers a rare glimpse into the ways that an informant can shape–or deform–official decisions.

NPR series on “House of Death” informant

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NPR is running a three-part series on the federal informant connected to the so-called House of Death murders that occurred six years ago in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico: The Case of a Confidential Informant Gone Wrong. For additional coverage of this story, see this 2007 Dallas Observer feature entitled House of Death. The informant, who was known as “Lalo” to his handlers, was working for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) even as he participated in drug-cartel-ordered executions. Top ICE officials deny knowledge of the murders and claim that “rogue agents” failed to follow guidelines, while Lalo’s handler, Agent Raul Bencomo, says his supervisors knew about the killings. According to NPR, ICE withheld information about Lalo’s role in the murders from the DEA and from Mexican officials. Former DEA Special Agent Phil Jordan describes the Lalo case as a disaster in which every rule was broken.

Even if the man was John Gotti in his prime, you do not allow an informant to run the investigation; you do not let the informant commit felonies, to commit murder. In my mind, he was given a license to kill.

Jordan testified in the now-defunct civil suit against ICE brought by relatives of the slain House of Death victims, two of whom were U.S. residents.
Lalo has been in federal custody for five years. Now that the case against Lalo’s target is over, ICE is trying to deport him back to Mexico.