The FBI’s use of mafia informants-some of them murderers -helped dismantle organized crime. Sometimes informants permit the government to investigate and convict offenders who would otherwise escape prosecution. In all these ways, the informant deal threatens the integrity of the criminal process.Īt the same time, using informants offers real benefits to law enforcement. The entire market is challenging to track and regulate because so many of its operations are secretive and informal. Government officials, conversely, have strong reasons to ignore informant wrongdoing and unreliability in order to win cases: Officials have been known to lie, break rules, cut corners, and even commit additional crimes to create, reward, and protect their informants. The most common benefit is leniency for the informant’s own crimes, but informants also work for all sorts of things including money, drugs, improved conditions of confinement, or legal immigration status for themselves or family members. This awareness affects the behavior of every player at every stage of the process.Ĭriminal informants are incentivized by a wide range of benefits to produce information for the government. Cooperation is a way of “working off” sentences. Defendants, inmates, defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges all understand that leniency is available for those who offer useful information to the government. This authority has created an enormous market for information and cooperation in the criminal process. Prosecutors can drop charges or recommend lower sentences in exchange for a defendant’s cooperation. Police can refrain from arresting a person who offers information about somebody else. criminal system permits the government to trade leniency for information, giving law enforcement wide discretion. The Colomb case is just one example of how the use of criminal informants, and jailhouse informants in particular, distorts large swaths of our criminal justice process. “We potentially have a huge problem with this network in the federal prison system.” 1.The criminal informant deal “The problem wasn’t just this case,” U.S. The case against the Colombs unraveled, and the presiding judge called for an investigation. He sent an angry letter to the prosecutor on his own case complaining, ironically, that he had been robbed. The scam came to light accidentally when a Texas inmate paid $2,200 for the Colomb file but never received it. A for-profit snitching ring was operating inside the prison system, where wannabe informants could pay thousands of dollars for information about defendants. The 30 witnesses were jailhouse informants who fabricated evidence against the Colombs in the hope of reducing their own sentences. After the jury convicted them, Colomb and her sons sat in prison facing sentences that ranged from 10 years to life.īut none of it was true. Over 30 witnesses were prepared to testify that they had sold crack to the Colombs. Federal prosecutors said that, over the course of a decade, the family bought $15 million worth of drugs with a street value of more than $70 million. In 2006, Ann Colomb and her three sons were convicted of running one of the largest crack cocaine distribution rings in Louisiana. We will update our Explainers quarterly to keep them current. Wherever possible, we try to utilize the stories of those affected by the criminal justice system to show how these laws and principles should work, and how they often fail. We break down the problems behind the headlines-like bail, civil asset forfeiture, or the Brady doctrine-so that everyone can understand them. In our Explainer series, Justice Collaborative lawyers and other legal experts help unpack some of the most complicated issues in the criminal justice system.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |