According to a recently released year-long investigation by the Cincinnati Enquirer, local police and prosecutors quietly used informants in dozens of homicide cases, many of which later fell apart. See Enquirer investigation: Cincinnati homicide cases unravel after deals with informants. Here’s just one example from the article:
Before his violent death in 2012 – prosecutors say he was shot for “being a snitch” – [Quincy] Jones became a prolific police informant, joining a network of informants and cooperating witnesses who for years helped Cincinnati law enforcement close homicide cases. The informants sometimes testified in multiple cases and, like Jones, worked with detectives and prosecutors who vouched for their reliability. But an Enquirer investigation found several of those cases later unraveled, raising the possibility that unreliable informants helped send innocent people to prison and allowed others to get away with murder.
Jones began cooperating in 2008 when he was charged with multiple murders. He fled to Seattle; when he was brought back to Cincinnati he met with Police Detective John Horn and offered to cooperate. As the article describes it, “On the day Jones signed the deal, prosecutors dropped one of the murder charges against him and reduced the other to involuntary manslaughter. [] Judge Beth Myers then sentenced him to four years in prison, far less than the 20 years to life he would have faced with a murder conviction.” Two years later Jones cut another deal which permitted him to walk free in 2010.
The article also reveals the kinds of sleight-of-hand used to conceal informant deals from defendants, courts, and the public:
Because [Jones’s] deal was confidential, defense attorneys, judges and juries in future cases wouldn’t know its terms. They also wouldn’t know that if Jones went back on the deal, all the original charges, including a possible life sentence, could be reinstated. Of the 12 homicide cases Jones cooperated on, The Enquirer found, he testified in court about at least five. Each time, Jones said he’d been promised nothing in exchange for his testimony.
According to his written plea deal, that was true. Because the agreement didn’t identify specific cases, Jones could say his testimony in those cases wasn’t connected to his plea deal.
[Detective] Horn, who is now retired, said that’s a common arrangement. “You haven’t done anything for me until, you know, you do something for me,” Horn said. “There’s never been any promises made.”