Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Jailhouse Informants

Washington Post zeroes in on jailhouse snitches in capital cases

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The Washington Post just ran this story entitled “Va. murder trial may become part of national debate on jail informants.”  The story exposes the use of four questionable jailhouse informants in a Virginia death penalty case, and connects those issues to the Orange County scandal, another high profile informant debacle in Washington D.C., and reform efforts around the county. From the story:

“When a Virginia man faces a possible death sentence in a murder trial later this year, his fate may rest on the testimony of four jailhouse informants, two of whom were initially found mentally incompetent to stand trial in their own cases. 

The case of Joaquin S. Rams could soon become part of a growing national backlash over the government’s use of testimony from “snitches” — inmates who offer information against other inmates in exchange for lighter sentences or other benefits — to obtain convictions, sparked by a significant number of wrongful convictions attributed to false informant testimony.”

Call for federal investigation of Orange County

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The jailhouse snitch scandal in Orange County continues to escalate.  In November, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp, and numerous other legal experts (including me), called for a federal investigation.  Here is the letter to U.S. Attorney General Lynch.  A month earlier, the New York Times Editorial Board identified the “blatant and systemic misconduct in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office” and also called for a federal investigation.  Meanwhile, the OC Register published this special report entitled “How jailhouse informants and the ‘snitch tank’ put Orange County justice system in turmoil.”

9th Circuit panel intervenes in prosecutorial misconduct

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During appellate argument, a Ninth Circuit panel of federal judges lambasted the California Attorney General’s office for failing to discipline a prosecutor who lied about rewarding a jailhouse snitch.  Los Angeles Times story and video of argument (beginning at 16:00 minutes) here.  The panel, which included Judges Kozinski, Wardlaw and Fletcher, instructed the government attorney to go back to his office and tell the Attorney General to act on the matter.

Orange County jailhouse informant scandal goes national

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National attention is finally turning to the Orange County fiasco.  The judge has kicked the entire District Attorney’s Office off the case, largely because so many prosecutors and sheriffs lied under oath to protect their secret records and unconstitutional practices.  Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has called for an independent inquiry and major reforms; Al Jazeera has revealed secret recordings of the informant’s negotiation with sheriffs; Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick says the scandal “shows eerie parallels” to other jailhouse informant debacles. Speaking to Slate, Laura Fernandez at Yale Law School concludes that the “massive cover up by both law enforcement and prosecutors…has effectively turned the criminal justice system on its head.”

Hopefully all this attention will finally persuade lawmakers that jailhouse informants are a public policy worth regulating properly at the front end, instead of waiting for some intrepid defense attorney or journalist to uncover a disaster.  For jurisdictions that have recently concluded as much, see this post.

Detroit jailhouse snitch ring

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Add Detroit to the list of known jailhouse informant scandals.  This story–Ring of Snitches: How Detroit Police Slapped False Murder Convictions on Young Black Men–details how during the 1990s, numerous informants obtained “lenient sentences as well as food, drugs, sex and special privileges from detectives in the Detroit Police Department’s homicide division in return for making statements against dozens of prisoners eventually convicted of murder.”  The story is eerily reminiscent of the Los Angeles debacle, as well the ongoing scandal in Orange County.