The Intercept has published a story of a man who documented and recorded nearly two years of efforts by the FBI to pressure him into becoming an informant. Story and recordings here: Recordings Capture Brutal FBI Tactics to Recruit a Potential Informant. The story is by Trevor Aaronson, author of “The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism.”
Threats to Informants
North Dakota passes cutting edge legislation
In the wake of the death of college student Andrew Sadek, North Dakota has passed Andrew’s Law, an important piece of legislation that sets a new standard in informant reform. Some of the most heartening aspects of the bill are as follows:
- It bans the use of informants who are 15 years old or younger. Only California and New Jersey currently ban the use of juvenile informants at the state level, and their cutoff is 12 years old.
- College police may not use college students as informants.
- Police officers must be trained before they use informants.
- All informant agreements must be in writing. The agreement must include, among other things, an explanation of what the informant is expected to do and what benefit they can expect to receive. This is particularly important since young and vulnerable informants may not know what is expected of them, and law enforcement may continue to use them without clear boundaries or limits.
- The agreement must tell the informant of their right to consult with counsel.
- The agreement must warn the informant that the work may be dangerous.
- The bill creates procedures for complaints, and an investigative process when an informant is killed.
Threats against cooperators and calls for secrecy
Earlier this year, the Federal Judicial Center released a report assessing threats against federal defendants who cooperate: Survey of Harm to Cooperators. A survey of federal judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, and probation officers showed that the majority of these legal officials were aware of threats to or harms against cooperating defendants in one or more cases. The survey identified hundreds of cases in which cooperators or witnesses were threatened or harmed.
The Marshall Project reported on this issue today in an article entitled “Is the Internet endangering criminal informants? A judicial committee proposes more secrecy.” A committee of the Judicial Conference has called for more secrecy regarding cooperator status, including proposals to routinely seal records or create special “sealed supplements” to every case. But there are several problems with this approach. As the Marshall Project put it:
“Many defense attorneys and free speech advocates say that the proposed new rules are troublesome (and perhaps unlawful) for at least two reasons. First, they say, creating a sealed annex in every case could deprive the public, and the media, of basic information that goes beyond the issue of cooperation. Second, several defense attorney told me this week the proposed new rules could have the perverse effect of making life even more dangerous for informants; the existence of sealed supplement would mean every inmate was presumed to be a “snitch” unless proven otherwise. And such proof would be hard to come by with the information sealed.”
60 Minutes on young informants
On Sunday, 60 Minutes ran this segment entitled “Young people going undercover in war on drugs.” The story covered several examples that have been in the news, including the recent Buzzfeed investigation into the student informant program at Ole Miss, the death of college student Andrew Sadek in North Dakota, and the death of Rachel Hoffman in Florida. More examples are here. For a thorough look at the ways that young informants are pressured and used, read the New Yorker article The Throwaways.
Washington Post: witness intimidation a continuing problem
[A]t least 37 people in the District and Maryland [] have been killed since 2004 for cooperating with law enforcement or out of fear that they might, according to a Washington Post examination of hundreds of police and court records. . . . .
The Post’s review found that among those killed for cooperating with authorities or out of fear that they might:
●At least 19 didn’t receive protection, including a confidential informant working for the Drug Enforcement Administration who was lured to a home by a drug dealer’s girlfriend and then fatally shot by the dealer.
●At least five were killed after defense attorneys learned their names or other identifying information and told their clients. In one case, a lawyer tipped off a defendant that prosecutors wanted to interview the witness. Six days later, the witness was found dead.
●Nine were offered protection but declined, including a 38-year-old Baltimore County man who was unaware of the long criminal history — including murder, attempted murder and firearms charges — of the man he was scheduled to testify against.
●At least five were slain after they were relocated but returned to their old neighborhoods.
●In at least four cases, charges against a defendant were dropped after the witness was killed.