Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Threats to Informants

The death of teenager LeBron Gaither

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This new episode of Radley Balko’s podcast on The Intercept, Collateral Damage: Blown Cover, takes a hard look at the reckless ways that law enforcement endangers the lives of its most vulnerable informants. The episode is devoted to the heartbreaking story of LeBron Gaither, an 18-year-old informant who was tortured and killed after Kentucky police carelessly revealed his identity. For more information about the lawsuit filed by Gaither’s grandmother, see this post: Police found liable for young informant’s death.

The podcast also features Sarah Stillman, author of the influential New Yorker article “The Throwaways,” in which she exposed the widespread use and abuse of child informants. That article helped inspire a 60 Minutes special episode, “Confidential Informants,” about college students pressured to work as informants. For more stories about the use of young informants, see these posts.

U.S. breaks a high-stakes informant deal

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The Washington Post reports that in exchange for access to El Salvadoran prisons, Secretary of State Marco Rubio agreed to turn over nine MS-13 gang informants to the El Salvadoran government, thereby breaking the U.S. government’s promises to those cooperators. Story here: “Rubio promised to betray U.S. informants to get Trump’s El Salvador prison deal.” The quid pro quo is an unusually public and high-profile example of how the government can and routinely does break its promises to informants, exposing cooperators to deportation, retribution and even death. Recent examples can be found here and here, but the problem is an old and endemic one.

Another notable feature of this particular case is the scrutiny and procedural protections that have kicked in as a result of the Justice Department’s efforts to dismiss the cases against the informants. The presiding judge, Judge Joan Azrack, refused to seal the motion to dismiss charges against Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, writing that:

“The public has a right under the First Amendment to know about this motion unless the government has identified an overriding compelling interest that warrants sealing. . . . In this case, the Government appears to be making inconsistent representations and the public has a right to know about this motion before its resolution.”

Most informant deals are less formal and more secretive than this one, and therefore trigger little or no scrutiny when they are breached. Which means we never learn about them at all.

U.S. seeks to deport gang informant back to El Salvador

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Brought to the U.S. by the FBI as a material witness in 2023, an informant against the MS-13 gang is now facing deportation back to El Salvador. Federal officials revealed his identity during the case in which he was supposed to testify, which means that he will be identified as a snitch if he is forced to return. He is currently seeking asylum, arguing that deportation would amount to a death sentence. WBUR, an NPR public radio station, reported on the story here: U.S. wants to deport FBI informant who was set to testify in gang case in Mass.

Informants are especially vulnerable in the immigration space. For another example of an El Salvadoran informant, this one a mere teenager, who was deported notwithstanding his cooperation, see this previous post: ICE marks 17-year-old informant for deportation and death.

Using children as informants

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More civil cases in which families have sued police for harm to their children who were working as informants. The cases are collected in this blog post from Professor Jeff Welty, Professor of Public Law & Government at the University of North Carolina; the post also includes several North Carolina police department policies on using children as informants. For more on the topic, see these previous posts.

Refusing to snitch

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The Marshall Project has published this remarkable story about George Hall who refused to serve as a jailhouse informant against David Wood. David Wood is on death row and is scheduled to be executed next month in Texas.

Hall, Wood, and two other men were all incarcerated together back in 1990. According to Hall, Hall and the two other men were offered deals by Texas law enforcement to testify falsely against Wood. Hall refused; the other men agreed and helped convict Wood. From the story:

“As Hall tells it, several El Paso detectives took the three men, without handcuffs, to a hamburger joint and a police station, seating them in a room with photographs of the victims, a large coffee pot, cigarettes and snacks. They handed the men case files with crime scene photos and interview notes with other witnesses, Hall said. “David Wood is our suspect,” he recalls the detectives saying. “It’d be best if you tell us something, because we can’t let this guy walk.” Plus, there was reward money for people who helped them.”

Stories like Hall’s are rare for a number of reasons. The government only rewards inculpatory evidence — evidence that builds the state’s cases and makes defendants look guilty — not evidence that might help exonerate a defendant. Conversely, defendants can’t offer leniency at all, and offering money or a reward looks like witness tampering. Which means that all the incentives run in one direction, towards snitching for the prosecution and away from contradicting the government’s story. When someone like Hall refuses to snitch, moreover, they will not be called as a witness by the government, which means the defense might never learn about them. And coming forward like Hall did can be risky for people facing their own criminal cases: they run the risk of law enforcement disfavor or even retaliation. (This reality sits in considerable tension with the Second Circuit’s holding that prisoners have a First Amendment right against being forced to act as an informant.)

For all these kinds of reasons, when people refuse to snitch, we are unlikely to learn about it, which makes this particular story even more revealing. Story here: He Refused to Become a Jailhouse Snitch. Can He Stop David Wood’s Execution?