Here’s an op-ed I wrote for The Crime Report chronicling the latest wave of state legislative reform. Some highlights:
– Texaspassed comprehensive reform requiring prosecutors to track and disclose their informants’ criminal history, past testimony, and benefits. The New York Times called it “the most comprehensive effort yet to rein in the dangers of transactional snitching.”
– Andrew’s Law in North Dakota prohibits campus police from using students as informants. State police may only use informants with a written agreement. Of particular note, Andrew’s Law bans the use of child informants under the age of 16, one of very few states to do so.
– Illinois came very close to re-instituting reliability hearings. The state previously required them in capital cases: now that Illinois no longer has the death penalty this bill will require pretrial hearings for all jailhouse informants.
– Montana’s Senate Bill 249 introduced comprehensive legislation that would require, among other things, electronic recording of informant statements, greater prosecutorial disclosure, pretrial reliability hearings, and cautionary jury instructions.
– Washington recently considered two bills. One from 2016 would have required pretrial reliability hearings in all informant cases. The other would have required enhanced prosecutorial disclosure. Barry Scheck, founder and director of the Innocence Project, wrote that the Washington legislation was a “key advance” and that it represented an opportunity to “ensure that the strongest protections are in place for the innocent.”