Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Reliability

Informant expert testimony held admissible in Connecticut

by

The Connecticut Appellate Court has held that expert testimony on the general unreliability of jailhouse informants is admissible, and that a trial court abused its discretion when it excluded a defense expert (me) in a trial in which the conviction depended on several jailhouse informants.  The opinion is here: State v. Leniart.  The discussion of the expert issue is in Part IV, beginning on page 42.

The opinion contains several key findings:

1. The Court “acknowledged the growing recognition by the legal community that jailhouse informant testimony is inherently unreliable and is a major contributor to wrongful convictions throughout this country.” (p. 43, quoting State v. Arroyo)

2. “Although credibility determinations ultimately must be left to the jury, expert testimony nevertheless is admissible if it can provide a jury with generalized information or behavioral observations that are outside the knowledge of an average juror and that would assist it in assessing a particular witness’ credibility. As long as the expert does not directly opine about a particular witness’ credibility or [] testify in such a way as to vouch indirectly for or bolster the credibility of a witness, the expert’s testimony would not invade the province of the jury to decide credibility and may be admitted.” (p.49)

3. An understanding of jailhouse informant culture, including the expectation of benefits and the lengths to which informants may go to procure and fabricate evidence, is not within the ken and understanding of the average juror (p. 50).

4. Expert informant testimony is similar to expert testimony regarding the unreliability of eyewitness testimony which is now widely viewed as admissible (p.51-52).

5. Generalized jury instructions may be insufficient to educate jurors regarding the dangers of informant unreliability,  since in eyewitness cases “generalized jury instructions were not an adequate substitute for expert testimony” (p. 52).

Washington Post zeroes in on jailhouse snitches in capital cases

by

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.”

Reliability hearings in Washington state

by

The Washington State House and Senate are considering bills that would institute pretrial reliability hearings in which judges would evaluate informant witnesses for unreliability before those informants could testify in front of juries. The House version would mandate the hearings; the Senate version gives judges discretion over whether to hold them or not.  News coverage from the Associated Press here.

Reliability hearings are one of many important tools available to combat unreliable informants and avoid wrongful conviction, including corroboration requirements, stronger and earlier discovery requirements, jury instructions, and limits on when and how informants can be used.  The Washington legislation thus represents an important first step.  It is motivated in part by the wrongful convictions of three young Washington residents several years ago who were convicted based on the testimony of a highly unreliable compensated informant.

Informant contradicts Tampa police account of SWAT killing

by

The Tampa Bay Times reports that a criminal informant has come forward to dispute the police’s account of a SWAT team killing.  In Confidential informer blows whistle in fatal Tampa SWAT raid, the Times describes the informant Ronnie Coogle as a 50-year-old addict and long-time offender who often worked as a police informant.  Coogle says that police misrepresented the information he gave them, as that as a result police unnecessarily killed “Jason Westcott, a young man with no criminal convictions whom a SWAT team killed during a drug raid that found just $2 worth of marijuana.”  As the Times describes it, it’s impossible to know what the truth really is, both because of Coogle’s own admitted record of lying to police, and the police’s failure to monitor or keep records about Coogle and the case:

“Coogle is nobody’s idea of a righteous whistle-blower. The only constant in his story is his own dishonesty; even when he confesses to lying you don’t know if he’s telling the truth.  Much of what he says can be neither proved nor disproved, in large part because of the Police Department’s minimal supervision of his work. But Coogle’s allegations against the cops who paid him, and even his own admissions of double-dealing, aren’t necessarily what’s most disturbing about his account.  Most unsettling of all might be what nobody disputes — that police officers were willing to trust somebody like him in the first place.”

Another informant who turned on his handlers in this way was Alex White, the Atlanta informant who blew the lid off the police killing of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston and triggered a federal investigation into Atlanta police practices.  See the New York Times Magazine feature here.

Detroit jailhouse snitch ring

by

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.