Legal Commentary

Say Hello to "The Snitching Blog"

By Jeralyn

I think I found my new BFF. Say hello to the brand new "The Snitching Blog", by Loyola Law Professor Alexandra Natapoff. Its tagline is: "A comprehensive resource on criminal informants: legal developments, legislation, news stories, cultural reactions, commentary and more...."

Professor Natapoff is an award-winning scholar and a nationally-recognized expert on snitching in the criminal justice system. Prior to joining the faculty she served as an assistant federal public defender in Baltimore.....She clerked for the Honorable David S. Tatel, US Court of Appeals, District of Columbia, and for the Honorable Paul L. Friedman, US District Court, Washington, DC.

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From her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in 2007 on informants:

The government’s use of criminal informants is largely secretive, unregulated, and unaccountable. This is especially true in connection with street crime and urban drug enforcement. This lack of oversight and quality-control leads to wrongful convictions, more crime, disrespect for the law, and sometimes even official corruption. At a minimum, we need more data on and better oversight of this important public policy.

...Informants breed fabrication....According to research conducted by Professor Laurence Benner and the San Diego Warrant Project, police often fabricate informants to support warrant applications. This is made possible because courts almost never require the informant to be produced or the information verified. Many wrongful convictions have resulted from police and prosecutors using informants to bolster weak cases.

Among her recommendations:

Reliability Hearings and Corroboration Requirements

When scientific and other experts testify in federal court, we require the court to act as “gatekeeper” to ensure their reliability and to protect the jury from undue prejudice and confusion. The same concerns arise with informants, who are, after all, another form of compensated witness. Numerous state jurisdictions recognize the inherent unreliability of snitch and accomplice witnesses and require corroboration. These two measures would help alleviate the significant problem of false informant testimony at trial. Because such a small percentage of cases go to trial, however, it should be recognized that trial-based procedures can address only a part of the larger problem.

For me, one of the most problematic issues is the use of uncorroborated snitch and accomplice testimony -- particularly when the Government uses it at sentencing to seek an increase in relevant conduct under the Guidelines. We need a policy that requires corroboration of snitch and accomplice testimony by independent evidence before a grand jury can find probable cause, a jury can find proof beyond a reasonable doubt, or a court can rely on it to increase the quantity of drugs for which a defendant is responsible at sentencing.

Professor Natapoff's book, Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice will be published in November but is available to pre-order now.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on August 18, 2009 (boomark / email).