The jailhouse snitch scandal in Orange County continues to escalate. In November, Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp, and numerous other legal experts (including me), called for a federal investigation. Here is the letter to U.S. Attorney General Lynch. A month earlier, the New York Times Editorial Board identified the “blatant and systemic misconduct in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office” and also called for a federal investigation. Meanwhile, the OC Register published this special report entitled “How jailhouse informants and the ‘snitch tank’ put Orange County justice system in turmoil.”
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Orange County jailhouse informant scandal goes national
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.
More on the Orange County snitching scandal
The revelations that the California Orange County District Attorney’s Office has been secretly using jailhouse snitches without disclosing information to defense counsel has led to some stunning developments, including dropped homicide cases and the release of a man held for two murders. As Radley Balko at the Washington Post put it, “Incredibly, Orange County prosecutors appear to be ready to let accused murderers and other alleged felons go free rather than open up practices and tactics to scrutiny.” In an article entitled “Here is why an admitted killer walked free,” the OC Register explains one case:
“Isaac John Palacios admits he shot and killed a rival gang member, pulling the trigger at least 15 times in a Santa Ana driveway. Last month, he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, a crime that often carries a life sentence.
But Palacios walked free hours later from the county jail. Despite the guilty plea, Orange County prosecutors agreed to release the 30-year-old gang member, giving him credit for time served, and dropping charges against him in a second gang killing.
The lenient deal is a casualty of the district attorney’s surreptitious use of jailhouse informants to gather information from suspects awaiting trial and the office’s tardiness in turning over evidence to the defense. This conduct came under legal attack this past year during the prosecution of Orange County’s largest mass killing case. …
The lead prosecutor in the Palacios case, Marc Rozenberg, said he agreed to the deal, in part, because he didn’t want another judge to review evidence of discovery and informant violations. One local judge already ruled prosecutors committed misconduct.”
Orange County jailhouse snitch operation
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.
Test your knowledge of jailhouse snitches
The Orange County scandal has kept public attention focused on the jailhouse informant phenomenon. This quiz published in The Marshall Project assembles some dramatic examples, and reminds us of the wide variety of benefits that informants receive, how little regulation the Supreme Court has imposed on the practice, and how easy it is for informants to collude with each other.