Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Jailhouse Informants

ALEC promotes informant legislative reform

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Better known for its advocacy on behalf of business and economic growth, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has issued new model Jailhouse Informant Regulations.  They require state’s attorneys to keep track of informants who provide information or testimony, to record all benefits promised or given to informants, and to provide full disclosure of an informant’s criminal record, their participation in other cases, and all benefits.  Of particular note is how comprehensively the model regulations define the term “benefit”:

  “Benefit’ means any plea bargain, bail consideration, reduction or modification of sentence, or any other leniency, immunity, financial payment, reward, or amelioration of current or future conditions of incarceration in return for, or in connection with, the informant’s participation in any information-gathering activity, investigation, or operation, or in return for, or in connection with, the informant’s testimony in the criminal proceeding in which the prosecutor intends to call him or her as a witness.”

The definition recognizes that informant benefits come in many shapes and sizes, from leniency to money to improved conditions of confinement.   The definition also recognizes that informants can receive benefits for information-gathering activities even if they are never called to testify.  A strong definition is important because it captures the reality that informants are motivated by a wide range of potential rewards which can affect their behavior and reliability.

ALEC’s model regulations are consistent with reforms in other states such as Texas and Florida that are starting to require greater transparency and disclosure regarding informants.  They are a great start for other states considering reform.  They are also a great sign that the risks of informant use are now firmly part of the mainstream legislative conversation.

From the ALEC website: “The American Legislative Exchange Council is America’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.”

Jailhouse informants used threats to get confessions

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This piece from Ted Rohrlich, who is now writing for Injustice Watch, chronicles the use of two Mexican Mafia informants in Southern California who sometimes threatened their cellmates to get them to confess.  The informants, whose work came to light as part of the Orange County snitch scandal, were paid over $300,000 over six years by law enforcement in multiple counties.  They also received numerous breaks and perks.  From the story “Miranda ‘loophole’: CA police use gang enforcers to win cellmate confessions”:

  “[C]onfessions did not always flow, and in several cases, court records show, the enforcers-turned-informants—like other Southern California jailhouse informants before them—resorted to death threats to provoke suspects to talk. They claimed suspects were on “green light” lists of inmates that Mexican Mafia leaders had ordered killed because they were believed to have broken a Mexican Mafia rule. But if they confessed—admitting the killing of which they were suspected but denying that they had broken the rule—the enforcers-turned informants could go to bat for them and have them removed from the lists.”

The constitutional law here is interesting.  In Illinois v Perkins, the Supreme Court held that the government can deploy jailhouse informants against incarcerated inmates to get confessions without Miranda warnings, as long as those inmates have not yet been charged with a crime.  But the Court also held in Arizona v. Fulminante that the use of threats to extort confessions can render those confessions involuntary in violation of due process.

This story also deserves attention because of who wrote it–no one knows jailhouse snitches like Ted Rohrlich does.  He was the Los Angeles Times reporter who broke a series of stories in the late 1980s about the rampant use of informants in the LA County jail.  That series helped trigger a ground breaking 1990 grand jury investigation which remains one of the most important sources for insights about jailhouse informant use. 

Illinois legislature passes new informant reform

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By Michelle Feldman

In April, the Illinois legislature passed new legislation that would require pre-trial reliability hearings and specific disclosure requirements before jailhouse informant testimony is admissible in the most serious criminal cases. Now Senate Bill 1830 is awaiting action by the governor.

Illinois has been on the forefront of safeguarding against wrongful convictions stemming from unreliable jailhouse informant testimony. Based on recommendations from former Illinois Governor George Ryan’s Commission on Capital Punishment, the state passed a law in 2003 requiring pre-trial reliability hearings and specific disclosure requirements before jailhouse informant testimony was admissible in capital cases, which became moot when the death penalty was abolished in Illinois in 2011. SB 1830 would apply the same safeguards in murder, sexual assault and arson cases. Read more here from NPR.

Nebraska considered jailhouse informant reform

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Earlier this year, Nebraska introduced legislation that would have enhanced protections against unreliable jailhouse informants, including reliability hearings, enhanced disclosure requirements, and mechanisms to keep track of the government’s use of such informants.  The text of the bill (which is currently on hold) is here; story in the Lincoln Journal Star is here. 

The developing science of informant cognition

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Behavioral psychologists have been studying the informant phenomenon, especially the thorny question of why jurors believe unreliable informants even when they know that the informants have strong incentives to fabricate evidence.  Some of those studies can be found here in the Resources & Scholarship section.

A group of researchers recently published this study finding that information from an informant can affect other witnesses in a case. Specifically, the study found that eyewitnesses who identified suspects in a line-up actually changed their identifications after learning that a jailhouse informant had implicated a different suspect.  Here is the abstract:

“Prior research has shown that primary confession evidence can alter eyewitnesses’ identifications and self-reported confidence. The present study investigated whether secondary confession evidence from a jailhouse informant could have the same effect. Participants (N = 368) watched a video of an armed robbery and made an identification decision from a photo lineup. Except for those in the no-feedback conditions, all participants then read that certain lineup members either confessed to the crime, denied involvement, or were implicated by a jailhouse informant. Jailhouse informant testimony implicating the identified lineup member led participants to have significantly higher confidence in their identification. In contrast, jailhouse informant testimony that implicated a lineup member other than the identified led participants to have significantly lower confidence in their initial identification, and 80% of these witnesses changed their identification. These results indicate that jailhouse informant testimony can influence eyewitnesses’ confidence and their identification decisions.”

Preston M. Mote & Jeffrey S. Neuschatz & Brian H. Bornstein & Stacy A. Wetmore & Kylie N. Key, Secondary Confessions as Post-identification Feedback: How Jailhouse Informant Testimony Can Alter Eyewitnesses’ Identification Decisions, Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology (2018).

We already know that informant testimony can arise to bolster weak cases, providing corroboration for faulty forensic evidence or uncertain eyewitness identifications.  This new study suggests that in addition to bolstering, informant testimony can actually alter other witnesses’ testimony.