Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

Search Results for: orange county

Jailhouse informants used threats to get confessions

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This piece from Ted Rohrlich, who is now writing for Injustice Watch, chronicles the use of two Mexican Mafia informants in Southern California who sometimes threatened their cellmates to get them to confess.  The informants, whose work came to light as part of the Orange County snitch scandal, were paid over $300,000 over six years by law enforcement in multiple counties.  They also received numerous breaks and perks.  From the story “Miranda ‘loophole’: CA police use gang enforcers to win cellmate confessions”:

  “[C]onfessions did not always flow, and in several cases, court records show, the enforcers-turned-informants—like other Southern California jailhouse informants before them—resorted to death threats to provoke suspects to talk. They claimed suspects were on “green light” lists of inmates that Mexican Mafia leaders had ordered killed because they were believed to have broken a Mexican Mafia rule. But if they confessed—admitting the killing of which they were suspected but denying that they had broken the rule—the enforcers-turned informants could go to bat for them and have them removed from the lists.”

The constitutional law here is interesting.  In Illinois v Perkins, the Supreme Court held that the government can deploy jailhouse informants against incarcerated inmates to get confessions without Miranda warnings, as long as those inmates have not yet been charged with a crime.  But the Court also held in Arizona v. Fulminante that the use of threats to extort confessions can render those confessions involuntary in violation of due process.

This story also deserves attention because of who wrote it–no one knows jailhouse snitches like Ted Rohrlich does.  He was the Los Angeles Times reporter who broke a series of stories in the late 1980s about the rampant use of informants in the LA County jail.  That series helped trigger a ground breaking 1990 grand jury investigation which remains one of the most important sources for insights about jailhouse informant use. 

California informant bill passes out of committee

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A bill that would improve recordkeeping and disclosure regarding jailhouse informants just passed out of the California Legislature’s Public Safety Committee.  The bill would also cap certain informants benefits.  Bill here and ACLU press release here.

I testified in support of the bill along with Bruce Lisker, who was wrongfully convicted of murder at age 17 based on jailhouse informant testimony, and spent 26 years in prison before he was exonerated.  Here is Mr. Lisker’s testimony from today’s hearing:

“Honorable Assembly Persons, my name is Bruce Lisker.  I am here to urge a YES vote on AB359.  On March 10, 1983 my teenage world became a nightmare. I discovered my mother beaten, stabbed and left for dead on the floor of our Sherman Oaks home. It wasn’t long before a corrupt LAPD detective was, unbelievably, arresting ME for the attack.  I was cast into the notorious “Snitch Tank” at L.A. County Jail, where I met a vile creature known as Robert Hughes, a morally bankrupt jailhouse informant with an extensive rap sheet and one overriding mission – to get out of jail.

After conning me into innocent conversation, Hughes told police I’d confessed to him. I was the fourth target of his lies inside of 18 months.  Police fed him cigarettes and food, flew him in private LAPD aircraft – and my prosecutor got him sprung from prison months early.

Hughes’ lies, and the criminal justice system that encourages them, cost me more than twenty-six years of freedom and youth I can never get back.  Had AB359 been the law of the land, my lawyer would have known that Hughes had a lengthy history of severe mental health issues, including documented psychotic breaks.

He was given inducements to investigate and testify against me, had unrecorded interviews with police about the case, and undue influence rewarded his lies with the thing he coveted most, his freedom.  All this was hidden or misrepresented by police and prosecutors.

Evidence is clear – jailhouse informant testimony is a leading causes of wrongful conviction in America.  As demonstrated by the recent outrage in Orange County, and investigations in at least five other California counties, this problem persists.  Please vote YES on AB359. Society deserves no less.”

Washington Post zeroes in on jailhouse snitches in capital cases

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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.”

Detroit jailhouse snitch ring

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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.

Jailed Mexican mafia snitches receive $150,000 and leniency

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From the Orange County Register: Money, cable TV, food delivery: How Mexican Mafia snitches lived like kings behind bars.  Here are a few excerpts:

“As two of the most prolific jailhouse informants in Orange and Los Angeles counties, Raymond Cuevas and Jose Paredes befriended suspects in jail and collected information in more than 30 criminal cases, according to a spreadsheet assembled by prosecutors. …For their efforts, Cuevas and Peredes received more than $150,000 from local law enforcement agencies during an 18-month period ending in March, records show.

The pair enjoyed other perks, too, including cable TV in their cells and Del Taco food delivered by officers. Cuevas and Paredes also received leniency on criminal charges that could have sent them to prison for life, according to court transcripts and other records.

Thirty-nine-year-old Cuevas, known as “Puppet,” was arrested four times for armed robbery. His last arrest was on charges of possessing a loaded weapon, a possible third strike that could have sent him to prison for life. Instead, the informant received a deal that allowed him to plead no contest in 2013; he received credit for five years already served but no prison sentence.

For several years, Cuevas was the shot-caller for Latino inmates at Los Angeles’ North County Correctional Facility, according to a ruling from the Second District Court of Appeal. On one occasion, he informed his deputy handler that he had just ordered a knife attack on another inmate as part of a jail turf war, the ruling stated. No action was taken by Los Angeles County deputies to prevent the attack, which left the inmate seriously wounded, the ruling said.  Cuevas was not prosecuted for the attack, but two inmates who carried out the order were convicted, according to the appellate ruling.”