Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Prosecutors

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.

“The Prosecutor and the Snitch”

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In this extensive review of the infamous Cameron Todd Willingham case, the Marshall Project zeroes in on the role of the jailhouse informant, Johnny Webb, and the prosecutor who covered up his rewards.  Story here: The Prosecutor and the Snitch: Did Texas execute an innocent man?  According to the article, Webb “lied on the witness stand in return for efforts by the former prosecutor, John H. Jackson, to reduce Webb’s prison sentence for robbery and to arrange thousands of dollars in support from a wealthy Corsicana rancher. Newly uncovered letters and court files show that Jackson worked diligently to intercede for Webb after his testimony and to coordinate with the rancher, Charles S. Pearce Jr., to keep the mercurial informer in line.”

In post-trial interviews, Webb said that the prosecutor approached him about testifying:

“[H]e asked Jackson, “What’s going to be my deal?” and Jackson said, “If you help me, that robbery will disappear … even if you’re convicted now, I can get it off of you later.”  …“He says, ‘Your story doesn’t have to match exactly… He says, ‘I want you to just say he put fires in the corners. I need you to be able to say that so we can convict him, otherwise we’re going to have a murderer running our streets.’ ” …  “He [Jackson] had me believing 100 percent this dude was guilty — that’s why I testified,” Webb said. “The perks — they was willing to do anything to help me. No one has ever done that, so why wouldn’t I help them?” In fact, Webb said, Willingham “never told me nothing.”

The Economist on the power of informants

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Today The Economist published The kings of the courtroom, exploring how the use of informants helps make “American prosecutors more power than ever before.”  The article covers examples ranging from Cameron Todd Willingham, who was wrongfully executed for arson based in part on a jailhouse snitch, to the Enron prosecutions which involved over 100 potentially cooperating unindicted co-conspirators.  From the piece:

     “The same threats and incentives that push the innocent to plead guilty also drive many suspects to testify against others. Deals with “co-operating witnesses”, once rare, have grown common. In federal cases an estimated 25-30% of defendants offer some form of co-operation, and around half of those receive some credit for it. The proportion is double that in drug cases. Most federal cases are resolved using the actual or anticipated testimony of co-operating defendants. 

     Co-operator testimony often sways juries because snitches are seen as having first-hand knowledge of the pattern of criminal activity. But snitches hoping to avoid draconian jail terms may sometimes be tempted to compose rather than merely to sing.”

New evidence in Willingham case highlights role of informant

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Cameron Todd Willingham was wrongfully executed for the arson deaths of his three children based on shoddy forensic expertise and the testimony of a single jailhouse snitch. See this New Yorker article. Now the Innocence Project has uncovered further evidence that the prosecutor in the case–now a judge–lied about the informant’s deal. Here’s the story: New Evidence Suggests Cameron Todd Willingham Prosecutor Deceived Board of Pardons and Paroles About Informant Testimony in Opposition to Stay of Execution.

Orange County jailhouse snitch operation

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The District Attorney’s Office in Orange County is accused of running an unconstitutional jailhouse snitch program, much like the infamous one in Los Angeles that ended twenty years ago. See these stories from the L.A. Times , the Voice of OC, and and Orange County Register. From the Register:

[Defense attorneys] say sheriff’s deputies, including one who worked as a “handler” for jailed informants, arranged for informants to be placed next to selected inmates and lure them into making incriminating statements. Deputies and prosecutors then conspired to hide the fact the men were informants from defense attorneys and pretended their encounters were coincidental, despite the longstanding legal requirement that prosecutors turn over information that could help the defense.