Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Jailhouse Informants

Jailhouse snitches pay $1000s for information

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USA Today ran this indepth story about a pay-for-information scheme in the Atlanta jail, in which federal inmates looking for cooperation credit bought information to pass on to their handlers, passing it off as their own knowledge. Story here: Federal prisoners use snitching for personal gain. The story offers an unusually detailed and extensive look at the ways that inmates and informants can game the system, buying and selling information that prosecutors and investigators then reward them for and rely on. In this black market free-for-all, inmates paid tens of thousands of dollars ($250,000 in one case) for information to lower their sentences, while FBI agents relied on snitches who were passing on second-hand uncorroborated information from the street. It is the fourth such scheme uncovered in Atlanta alone in the last 20 years.

A similar pay-for-information scheme was discovered in a federal prison in Louisiana, after Ann Colomb and her three sons were wrongfully convicted based on the testimony of dozens of snitch inmates. See this post: Professional Prison Snitch Ring.

New informant legislation introduced in Texas

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A Texas legislator has just introduced a new bill, H.B. 189, that would bar the use of compensated criminal informants in capital cases. H.B. 189 would make informant and accomplice testimony inadmissible if “the testimony is given in exchange for a grant or promise by the attorney representing the state or by another of immunity from prosecution, reduction of sentence, or any other form of leniency or special treatment.” In effect, the bill embodies the sensible idea that paying criminals for their testimony is simply too unreliable to be used in death penalty cases. The Texas Tribune ran this story: Bill Would Restrict Informant Testimony in Death Cases. The bill would also bar the use of alleged confessions made to jailhouse snitches unless the confessions are corroborated by electronic recordings. In many ways Texas has been on the forefront of this issue–the state already has drug and jailhouse snitch corroboration requirements. See this post: Texas requires corroboration for informant witnesses.

In the news: released jailhouse informant accused in new murder

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The Louisville Courier-Journal reports on a jailhouse informant who was released in exchange for his testimony. Two months later, he was charged in the murder of a 15-year-old. From the story:

Jefferson Circuit Court Judge McKay Chauvin told James Mallory in February that he wasn’t a good choice to be released from prison on shock probation, given his criminal history — and, in fact, the judge had already denied the request previously.

But Chauvin nonetheless released him at prosecutors’ request after Mallory came forward with what he called “bombshell” information in a letter offering the Jefferson Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office evidence against several defendants in exchange for helping him get out of a nine-year prison term.

Now, just two months later, Mallory is charged with murdering a 15-year-old boy.

Impact of “Rachel’s Law” on informant use

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The Tallahassee Democrat has published this article about the effects of Rachel’s Law on informant use in Florida, four years after the death of Rachel Hoffman: Four years later, Hoffman’s death still impacts CI use. The article concludes that the Tallahassee police department made some significant changes.

For six months immediately following Hoffman’s death, the department suspended the use of all CIs. For a long time, no one wanted to work narcotics cases, which often rely on informants, the chief said.

“We had to be confident in our investigators that they were ready,” Chief Jones said.

An audit of department confidential-informant files conducted about six months after Hoffman was killed found lax record keeping and noted areas of improvement. Personnel were moved, the vice unit was made a part the Criminal Investigations Division of a new Special Investigation Section and supervision was stepped up.

Today, TPD’s rules governing the handling of confidential informants mirror that of Rachel’s Law, which was spearheaded by Hoffman’s parents and provides some safeguards for vulnerable informants.

“I think we’ve got a very good policy now,” Jones said. “We have elevated ourselves and are back in the lead and set the tone for the state.”

Tallahassee is reminiscent of Los Angeles in the 1990s. After a massive grand jury investigation concluded that the jail was rampant with unreliable informants and that police and prosecutors were relying on them, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office instituted significant changes. Today, it has some of the most rigorous regulations for the tracking and use of jailhouse informants in the country: Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office Legal Policies Manual.

Supreme Court begins debating informant unreliability

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The Supreme Court released an order today denying certiorari in Cash v. Maxwell, formerly Maxwell v. Roe, an important Ninth Circuit decision discussed in this previous post. Usually the Court does not explain cert denials, but this case generated a heated debate between Justice Sotomayor, who supported the denial, and Justices Scalia and Alito who thought the Ninth Circuit’s decision should have been overturned. See SCOTUSblog post here, and L.A. Times story here.

Today’s decision is important for a number of reasons. First, it shows that the Justices have joined numerous state and federal legislators in recognizing the problem of informant unreliability. Informant-based wrongful convictions are increasingly frequent in the courts and in the news, and many states have taken up the issue. See Legislation Section of the main website. Although the Court did not answer the question today, it’s a sign of the times that the Justices are arguing about it.

Maxwell also shows how the legal debate over informant use is becoming less about procedure and more about substantive questions of reliability and innocence. Until recently, most informant litigation has been a fight over disclosure: the information that the government must disclose regarding its use of compensated criminal witnesses. The Maxwell case and the Sotomayor/Scalia debate squarely confront the substantive question of unreliability: how unreliable can compensated criminal witnesses be before the law restricts their use? Or to put it another way, how high is our tolerance for the likelihood of wrongful conviction? Even Justice Scalia concluded that the informant in Maxwell’s case was a “habitual liar,” and that there were reasons “to think it likely that he testified falsely” at Maxwell’s trial. The Ninth Circuit took the next step, holding that the Due Process Clause does not permit such clearly unreliable evidence to be used. As a result of today’s cert denial, this holding stands.

Finally, Justice Sotomayor pointed out that the Ninth Circuit relied on “an avalanche of evidence” that the informant in that case was unreliable. The existence of such evidentiary avalanches is a relatively new phenomenon. Thanks to the innocence movement and numerous new studies (see Resources & Scholarship section on the main website), courts and litigators have more evidence than ever before regarding the unreliability of criminal informants. These new data will surely change how courts consider such questions in the future.