Since everyone in the criminal system knows that high-profile murder suspects are prime targets for jailhouse snitches, why not try to nip it in the bud? That's what one Arizona public defender tried to do, asking the judge to keep other inmates away from his client Pamela Phillips if those other inmates were also represented by the public defender's office. Were such inmates to come forward as snitch witnesses, it would create a conflict and the public defender's office could no longer represent Phillips. Story here: Pre-emptive anti-snitch move fails. The judge denied the motion, but its a good example of proactive lawyering that builds on our growing knowledge of how jailhouse informants operate.

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Today's Akron Beacon Journal reports on new developments in the Neal Rankin murder case: "DNA results may give inmate a new trial." The police had a lot of trouble identifying a suspect back in 1993--according to the commander of the homicide unit, they had "45 suspects the first day," and murder charges were brought and then dropped against several defendants. Finally, over a year after the murder, the government charged Dewey Amos Jones with the crime based on an allegation from a jaihouse snitch that Jones had confessed to him. I include the story not only because it is yet another example of a shaky case built on compensated snitch testimony, but because it illustrates how powerful an informant's allegations can be. Here, a jailhouse snitch got authorities to focus on Jones long after the crime, and without any direct evidence of his guilt. Jones is represented by the Ohio Innocence Project.

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The most egregious cases of informant unreliability occur where an entire case turns on the testimony of a single compensated snitch. The dangers of wrongful conviction in this scenario are so obvious that numerous states have or are considering corroboration requirements. But informant testimony can produce wrongful convictions in another way, and that is by making weak cases look stronger than they are. For example, Florida Today ran a story last week on the probable innocence of Gary Bennett. Bennett was convicted based on a now-discredited dog sniff expert and the testimony of a jailhouse snitch. Similarly, in the high profile case of Cameron Todd Willingham, the Texas man was convicted and executed for arson based on a combination of poor forensic science and the testimony of a jailhouse snitch who later recanted. See previous post.

Such cases are not accidents. Jailhouse snitches are infamous for fabricating information about homicide and other high-profile cases, and offering the information to law enforcement without any solicitations or promises on the part of the government. In other words, the very existence of the case generates the bad evidence because of the general expectation in the offender population that such information will eventually be rewarded. This snitch testimony, however, makes the original case look stronger than it really is. This problem cannot be solved by corroboration requirements, since the informant's information is automatically "corroborated" by the pre-existing weak evidence. Yet another reason to restrict the use of jailhouse informant testimony.

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CBS/48 Hours ran this special investigative report on serial killer-FBI informant Scott Kimball. Kimball--a long-time felon--was sharing a prison cell and saw a photo of his cellmate's girlfriend, Jennifer Marcum. Kimball concocted a story about a murder-for-hire scheme in order to secure his own release, and then--while working for the FBI as an informant--proceeded to murder Marcum and at least two other women. When Marcum's parents approached the FBI with their suspicions, Kimball's FBI handler dismissed them. This dynamic is one of the major dangers of informant reliance: not only was Kimball able to use his status as a jailhouse snitch to gain release based on fabricated evidence, but his snitch status and relationship with the government protected him, at least initially, from investigation.

This story reveals, among other things, that there are no clear lines between jailhouse snitches and working informants--one can morph into another and, all too often, take the government along for the ride. This fact should influence those states--including California, Illinois, and Texas, to name but a few-- that are considering jailhouse snitch reforms. The same concerns about unreliability and criminal conduct are present whenever any criminal informant--in or out of jail--trades information in order to escape punishment for his own crimes.

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Last week I did the Patt Morrison Show on KPCC (you can listen here), with prize-winning former L.A.Times investigative reporter Ted Rohrlich. Over the years he's done some great stories on informants. For example, in Trading Lies for Freedom, Rohrlich reported on several professional jailhouse snitches in the Los Angeles County jail system, including the now-infamous Leslie Vernon White of 60 Minutes fame. The piece describes the "variety of techniques" used by snitches to fabricate confessions:

To gather the information that will make a confession appear plausible, informants have used a variety of techniques, ranging from the artful to the crude. Some informants, for example, have carefully maintained files of newspaper and magazine articles on sensational criminal cases, or have stolen legal documents from the cells of other inmates. They have conned fellow prisoners, even those who have insisted on their innocence, into giving up key details of the cases against them. Some have pretended to be jailhouse lawyers offering free advice. Others merely have asked why someone is in jail, then transformed the most sincere protestations of innocence into admissions of guilt. Informants have purchased information from other informants for money, candy or cigarettes. Some informants have testified that they received inside information from police.

In Authorities Go Fishing for Jailhouse Confessions, Rohrlich described how some detectives purposefully placed suspects in the LA jail "snitch tank," hoping that the resident informants would come up with incriminating confessions. The story begins as follows:

The homicide detective thought he knew the identity of a murderer but couldn't prove it. To make his case, he wanted a confession. But his suspect wouldn't talk. Los Angeles Police Detective Philip Sowers did what one prosecutor said a lot of detectives do. He turned to the informant tank at Los Angeles County Jail for help. Sowers arranged for jailers to place his suspect, who was not an informant, in the special section of the jail reserved for informants -- inmates who habitually tell police that other inmates have confessed to murders or other serious crimes. Within days, Sowers had reports from four informants, known to detectives as "friendlies," that his suspect had confessed.

Joseph Jones had quite a choice. He could plead guilty to selling drugs he had not sold and serve eight years in prison. Or he could risk being convicted at trial and, as a three-time loser, be sentenced to life. Ex-felon Miguel Hernandez was offered a similarly absurd "break." He could give up 16 months of his life by pleading guilty to possessing a weapon he had never had. Or he could demand a trial and face the possibility of four or more years in prison. In offering criminal defendants these kinds of Hobson's choices, prosecutors and judges did not set out to induce innocent men to plead guilty--although that is what they did. The prosecutors and judges merely accepted the word of Los Angeles police that the men were guilty.

Each of these articles is important in its own right, shedding light on specific criminal justice failures. They also remind us that journalism plays a crucial role in maintaining the accountability of a criminal process that rarely volunteers information about its own mistakes.

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The federal rules of criminal procedure have special re-sentencing provisions for informants who provide information after they have already started serving their sentences. Rule 35(b)(2) permits a court to reduce a prisoner's sentence if the government asks the court to do so more than one year after sentencing. Rule 35(b)(1) governs such requests made less than a year after sentencing. Approximately 1,700 federal prisoners got such sentence reductions in fiscal year 2008. At least one federal judge, Judge Tucker Melancon (D-LA), has complained that inviting inmates to provide information while they are in prison is an invitation to fabrication. See post: Professional prison snitch ring.

Last month, the Seventh Circuit issued an opinion interpreting Rule 35(b)(2). In U.S. v. Shelby, the court held that a district judge contemplating a motion for a sentence reduction can only reduce the sentence based on the extent of the defendant's cooperation, and not on the more general sentencing factors contained in 18 U.S.C. 3553(a) which judges are required to consider when initially sentencing defendants. By contrast, the Sixth Circuit has held that judges can consider 3553(a)'s general sentencing factors--which include things such as a defendant's likelihood of rehabilitation, prior criminal record, and other personal history--when resentencing under 35(b)(2).

This may seem like an esoteric point, but it is important for several reasons. First, it affects thousands of sentences each year. Second, judges can consider the 3553(a) factors in refusing to reduce a cooperator's sentence; they just can't consider those factors if they want to lower the sentence. The Sixth Circuit deemed this to be an unfair "one-way rachet"--the Seventh Circuit didn't. Shelby also resists the general tide of recent federal case law that favors judicial discretion, since United States v. Booker restored sentencing discretion to federal judges. (See Sentencing Law and Policy blog for detailed discussions of Booker-related developments.) The Seventh Circuit, and other circuits that agree with it, have curtailed that discretion when it comes to rewarding post-sentence cooperation.

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Today's Huffington Post reports on the recent death row exonerations of Yancy Douglas and Paris Powell--both men were convicted based solely on in-custody or "jailhouse" snitch testimony. The post was written by John Terzano, president of the Washington D.C.-based Justice Project, which has produced a report on jailhouse snitch use and policy recommendations. Here's an excerpt from the post:

These exonerations highlight the power prosecutors have in securing convictions by utilizing in-custody informant testimony, even when no physical evidence links a defendant to the crime. Testimony by in-custody informants or "jailhouse snitches" as they are often referred, is a leading cause of wrongful convictions. With little to lose, jailhouse snitches have great incentives to provide false information to prosecutors in exchange for leniency or other forms of compensation. Deals that are made between prosecutors and jailhouse snitches do not often come to light when a jury has to weigh the evidence is a case.

I recommend this recent feature article in Reason Magazine by Radley Balko, entitled Guilty Before Proven Innocent. It tells the mind-blowing story of an innocent family in Louisiana, Ann Colomb and her three sons, who were wrongfully convicted of drug trafficking based on the testimony of numerous prison snitches. The informants were part of an information-selling network inside the federal prison, in which inmates purchased files and photographs to help them fabricate testimony which they then marketed to prosecutors in order to get sentence reductions. A bunch of inmates got hold of the Colomb file, and told prosecutors that they would testify against the family. If it werent for a few chance encounters that revealed the scam, the Colomb family would still be in federal prison.

I like this story because it highlights some classic problems with criminal informants. It also illustrates the scale of the phenomenon--and its potential for massive miscarriages of justice-- in ways that may be surprising to people unfamiliar with the daily workings of the criminal process.

Continue reading "Professional Prison Snitch Ring" »

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