Can Confidential and/or Jailhouse Informants be Trusted?

Police use confidential informants (CIs) and jailhouse snitches to gather information and put suspects behind bars all the time. Unfortunately, there are some real problems with the practice:

• There are no good mechanisms in place to figure out if an informant (or a police officer) is being untruthful;
• Informants have incentives to lie;
• Police raids based primarily on informant tips can be hyper-aggressive;
• Innocent people can get caught up in serious issues when named by an informant.

No Regulation 

Police essentially have no real rules when it comes to using informants. Multiple court cases have led to findings that law enforcement reliance on testimony from informants is not a Constitutional violation, meaning informants are a great way to get the information an officer is seeking. Unfortunately, informants generally have pretty good incentives to provide false testimony, including getting lesser sentences for their own crimes. And because many organizations lack appropriate control systems to deal with confidential informants, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that an officer could manufacture a fictional CI to create the evidence needed to obtain a warrant or make an arrest. After innocent people lost their lives in various police raids based on nonexistent confidential informants, calls for better controls on the use of CI’s led only to a Congressional hearing on the matter, but no substantial changes in practice.

Jailhouse Informants

 Testimony from jailhouse snitches, too, is unregulated, and therefore often unreliable. Nevertheless, it has been used in countless situations to put others behind bars. These informants generally get some sort of benefit in exchange for helping law enforcement, including:

• A reduction in their own charges;
• Monetary compensation;
• Special privileges while they are incarcerated.

Unreliable Information 

Informants often claim that a confession or details of a crime were shared by a defendant, or that they got second-hand information from other people. This is especially true with a case that is high-profile or gang-involved, when there is a lot of pressure on police to solve the crime.  But testimony from jailhouse informants frequently leads to wrongful convictions. In fact, it is estimated that nearly 20 percent of convictions that were later overturned with DNA evidence relied heavily on jailhouse snitches. All too often, such testimony occurs without the defense team or the jury ever learning exactly what incentives were offered in exchange for damaging testimony. Because national standards relating to such testimony are non-existent, and there are no rules relating to the tracking and management of it, innocent people have lost their freedom time and again due to inaccurate, and downright dishonest testimony.

The Defense You Deserve 

The experienced, aggressive Las Vegas criminal defense attorneys at Lobo Law always fight for the best possible outcomes for you. Confidential informants? Jailhouse snitches? We work to get to the bottom of it all. To discuss, schedule a confidential consultation today.

Source:

aclu.org/news/criminal-law-reform/the-use-of-confidential-informants-can-lead-to-unnecessary-and-excessive-police-violence