The recommendations from California's Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice on preventing informant abuses didn't come out yesterday as promised, but they have posted recommendations on eyewitness identification and preventing false confessions.
On eyewitness testimony they focused on improving photo lineup procedures, which I agree is a good idea. But the Commission avoided mention of what I think is the most important preventive for wrongful idenfitications: Requiring corroboration for eyewitnesses when they did not previously know the defendant.
On preventing false confessions, the Commission's recommendation was much stronger: Requiring audio-video recording of custodial interrogations for serious felonies, and specific training for police detectives on the causes of false confessions and how to avoid them.
Good stuff. California's Commission is doing a lot better job addressing these issues, to my mind, than the similar body appointed in Texas by Governor Perry. Check back here now and again for more CA recommendations as they come out.
UPDATE: Okay, here are CA's recommendations regarding informants. Bottom line, the Commission recommended requiring corroboration for jailhouse informants, but not other classes of snitches like those in drug cases. According to the Commission, 17 states require corroboration for jailhouse informants. Texas requires corroboration for informants in drug cases, but not for in-custody informants in other types of cases.
NUTHER UPDATE: CrimProf Blog points to the LA Times coverage.
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Law enforcement in most states are already ahead of the game.
They only do search warrants based on probable (possible) cause which is based on several low level buys made by snitches.
It's cheaper and there's all kinds of wiggle room. The informants can make these buys when they want, with their own money, and the police just report it like they witnessed it real time. Or there is no informant but they write it up like there is. Or they make a buy inside of a house from someone who doesn't own the house but they report it like they did.
No one challenges drug search warrants anymore and if they do, the police get to keep the money they seized which was their plan anyway.
In my experience, informants just add corroborration to bad investigations.
So far as I can tell, corroboration of eyewitness testimony (especially in the case of cops and confidential informants) is not high on anybody's reform agenda. The glaring exception is the circle of folks involved in the Tulia fiasco. Google "corroboration, testimony" and you get Tulia-related stuff. As Anonymous suggests, using CIs to corroborate the cops is pretty meaningless when, as in the Colomb case I keep blathering on about, the CI in question can be manipulated and coerced into confirming whatever the police want confirmed--reality be damned. The key problem here is that society, by and large, has decided that the mass incarceration of what the Nazis called "the superfluous population" requires exceptionally low law enforcement accountability standards. So long as most folks want to lock up a vast array of drug addicts, nickel and dime dealers, alcoholics, the mentally unstable, the mentally retarded, and the perennially unemployable the police will remain free to screw around with the Fourth Amendment.
To Alan Bean;
Defendants are bad but unsympathetic defendants are even worse. Use that a measuring device because that's the first step to being convicted. Next step is to formulate a theory and fit the evidence to that theory.
People think that's crazy but I saw it happen every day and no one challenged it because the police had cultivated a reporter at a local paper and a favored assistant at the DA's office. The reporter printed pretty much what they said and these cops made this DA look good. That's the formula not skill and no one challenged them because they'd target anyone who did.
Think about it this way. If I shot someone, left the crime scene, and someone else rendered aid to my dying victim. That other someone has DNA on them from my victim. If the someone I shot was a female, there may be DNA in the vagina from someone other than me or the victim may have DNA under their fingernails from someone other than her sex partner or the person who rendered the aid.
My point is not that DNA isn't a valuable tool but do you trust a cop to sort out the trail I left back to just me with all the DNA that doesn;t belong to the killer.
PS. I was typing so fast I forgot the most important part.
Then insert sntich testimony anywhere you need it in that theory and if you have two snitches I can convict anyone that left the DNA while the shooter is never caught. That's the way it works and if anyone thinks otherwise, their fools.
Anonymous:
Is that the way it happens in isolated little towns in the south, or is that the way it happens in places like Austin as well? In talking to public defenders about the use of snitch testimony (CI and inmate) to build federal conspiracy narcotics cases I often get this response, "Oh, I'm sure that happens when you get a bad prosecutor; but my prosecutor would never prosecute a case like that." The problem, as I told the public defenders I was addressing last weekend, is that there is no way you can demonstrate that a snitch is lying or telling the truth so long as he sticks to the story the cops or the prosecutor have laid out for him. It may be obvious to any thinking person that the snitch is lying, but juries will believe any snitch who reinforces the prosecution's narrative of guilt unless there is clear evidence of deception--and, apart from the obvious motive and opportunity issues, that is very difficult to demonstrate.
P.S. I also appreciate your comment about the media. Reporters have little interest in digging behind what lawyers tell them because in a culture of talking head reportage, what the DA says IS the story. This happens in little towns like Tulia (where the local media either ignored the Coleman sting or celebrated it) and in big markets like NY and LA. The New York Times swallowed everything defense attorneys told them without realizing (or caring) that defense counsel is ethically obligated to spin their clients as positively as possible. One panhandle attorney told me he tells the media what he wants them to believe and if they buy it uncritically that's their problem--DAs do the same. One of the most egregious cases of misreporting is tied to the Ramparts scandal in LA. A single cop turned on his colleagues (to save his own skin) and spouted an increasingly bizarre story of gross corruption. Some of what he said was true; much of it was demonstrably false. Yet the Los Angeles Times reported the story as if everything the cop-turned-snitch said was gospel truth. It simplified the story and, as always, you either believe a snitch or you don't--it's virtually impossible to sort out the reliable bits from the lies.
It happens in small and big towns but where it happens is not near as important as how it happens.
For example, a press release is just as important to a conviction as the evidence.
Myth #1: Potential jurors say they don’t read newspaper accounts of what happened. Believe me when I tell you jurors lie to get on a jury especially one with a high profile defendant. Their minds already contain the press accounts of what happened and the police and the prosecution know that. A press release gives quicker access to people minds so the agency I worked for developed newspaper names for ideas/concepts that quickly attached GUILT. The police don’t arrest someone who’s not GUILTY.
Myth #2: Police report the facts, just the facts, and they are disinterested public servants who enforce the laws without any personal interest or prejudice. This is the biggest crock because in my experience, most police officers learn quickly (two years) that they should write reports DAYS LATER, then back date it, because facts become clearer, and clearer, and clearer as information from other sources trickle into unclear thoughts. It’s called “writing someone into jail” and the size of the town nor the size of the law enforcement agency has anything to do with it.
When I worked in law enforcement, the prosecutors who worked with us were motivated by the same recognitions. They viewed themselves as “warriors”, heroes, world famous crime fighters, and top cops. Their filters were turned off and the goal of the group was reporting “cooperative efforts” and less and less with integrity. Exaggerations became acceptable substitutes for quality investigations and the cases were more creative writing assignments not investigations.
Pick up a newspaper and see if you don’t see these common threads; Investigations always now have an “Operation” name because it sounds group like; the investigations are always long term (14 months or more); they make you safer; they dismantle entire organizations; they’re large scale investigations; everyone’s working together; yet violent crime (especially gun violence) is on the rise; drug purities and availabilities are high; jails are full; and it’s a CYCLE not a strategy. It’s an upside down pyramid and the media (good or bad) supports the cycle in large and small cities.
In my state, there are 27 state prisons, 3 federal prisons and only five major universities.
Go figure.
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