PUBLISHER'S NOTE: July 14: Jailhouse informants: Paul Skaldic; Major (Welcome) development: Sarah Andrews reviews Pamela Collof's debut book in The Texas Chronicle, under the heading, "Catch the Devil Reveals a Criminal Justice System Caught Up in Its Own Delusions,"... "Both daunting and enraging, Catch the Devil burns down the illusory details of a “solved” murder case from the 1980s and wipes away the ash to reveal the sinister and self-serving criminal justice system beneath. Colloff is not under any delusion that her story will bring justice to Jim Dailey or fix the corrupt system that locked him up. To the reader, Colloff has just one thing to say: “This is happening, and you need to look at it.”
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INTERVIEW:" Source: Reason Magazine: Pamela Colloff on America's biggest jailhouse snitch."
INTERVIEWER: "BILLY BINION | FROM THE NOVEMBER 2026 ISSUE." (Billy Binion is a reporter at Reason, where he writes about criminal justice, civil liberties, and government accountability. He has been published in Newsweek, the San Francisco Chronicle, HuffPost, The Saturday Evening Post, and the Washington Examiner, among other publications. His work has been cited in The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Review, Fox News, Vice, and The Daily Beast. A story he broke exploring law enforcement misconduct in Louisiana was later the subject of a CBS Evening News broadcast. He is a frequent guest on podcasts, TV, and radio, including appearances on CNN, Blocked and Reported, NPR, 2WAY, and Newsweek's "The Debate" podcast."
BACKGROUND: "How Jailhouse Snitches Send Innocent People to Death Row" (Pamela Colloff discusses the dangers of incentivized testimony, the difficulty of overturning wrongful convictions, and how the justice system compounds its own errors. Billy Binion
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INTRO: "Paul Skalnik was one of the most prolific jailhouse snitches in American history. A new best-selling book, Catch the Devil, chronicles Skalnik's career helping prosecutors secure dozens of convictions—despite being a serial liar and criminal. His cartoonishly long rap sheet included elaborate frauds, multiple grand thefts, and sexual assault of a child; at various times, he passed himself off as a Southwest Airlines executive, a high-powered attorney, and a Vietnam War hero. In July, Reason's Billy Binion interviewed author Pamela Colloff, a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and reporter at ProPublica."
Q: How is it possible for someone with such an intense history of dishonesty to still earn the state's trust for decades?
A: I think you hit upon the big question of the book, right? Skalnik was a former police officer himself, so he sort of knew how the game worked. When he got to whatever county jail he ended up in, he could size up whoever it was that prosecutors most wanted a conviction against. And he would produce these incredible quote-unquote "confessions." And in return for his testimony about those confessions, he would usually be let free.
You can imagine how there were police and prosecutors who bought this. I think what becomes more difficult as he's used more widely in [Pinellas County,] Florida—where he helped send upward of 40 men to prison—at what point does someone say, "What are the odds that this guy in the jail has a better batting record than our best detectives?" No one ever says that.
Q: The book covers a lot of disturbing cases, but the one central to it is a murder case in Florida. Can you set the scene?
A: There was a 14-year-old girl named Shelly Boggio who was found in a body of water. She'd been stabbed over 30 times, and the assumption was that she'd been sexually assaulted.
The investigation quickly narrows down to a man named Jack Pearcy, who had a long history of violence against women. He was the last person seen with Boggio. When he's interviewed by investigators, he realizes they know too much. So he pivots to saying that he had his housemate—Jim Dailey—with him that night, and that it was Jim who committed this crime. Jim did not have that kind of record, and there's no physical or forensic evidence tying him to the crime, or any motive whatsoever.
Skalnik is brought in very shortly before the trial starts. He is moved in the jail to be close to where Jim Dailey was. Within 24 hours, he says he has procured Dailey's confession—a total stranger who's awaiting trial. It was a story that really played upon jurors' sympathies. He talked about how Jim Dailey had supposedly told him about stabbing Shelly Boggio to death and how she'd been staring at him in this pleading way, but she wouldn't die. It's this horrific image, and he is sentenced to death.
Q: What makes you think Dailey is actually innocent?
A: There have been over 200 people in the U.S. who were sentenced to death who have since been exonerated. We know that jailhouse informants—who are notoriously unreliable—are a factor in 25 percent of those wrongful convictions.
As far as Jim's case, there's no there there. When you see a case with three jailhouse informants, no physical evidence, no motive, and your quote-unquote "eyewitness" is the main suspect in the case? There are a lot of questions.
Q: To me, the secondary theme was that when credible evidence may exonerate someone after a jury has rendered a verdict, it is depressingly difficult to get another chance.
A: I am obsessed with this idea that the system is built to compound its own errors. When new evidence comes out—and there's a lot of new evidence that comes out over the years that really points toward his innocence—you would think that would be enough. For some very good reasons, a jury verdict is sacrosanct. But what you see is that courts really look backward at precedent and jury verdicts rather than forward at new evidence.
Jim gets terrific attorneys in this case—too late. They do incredible work, and it doesn't matter. Too many judges have rubber-stamped this testimony by Paul Skalnik. There's no way for the courts to essentially say, "Hey, let's go back and look at this holistically and see if any of this makes sense." It was shocking to me to see that.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity."
Q: How is it possible for someone with such an intense history of dishonesty to still earn the state's trust for decades?
A: I think you hit upon the big question of the book, right? Skalnik was a former police officer himself, so he sort of knew how the game worked. When he got to whatever county jail he ended up in, he could size up whoever it was that prosecutors most wanted a conviction against. And he would produce these incredible quote-unquote "confessions." And in return for his testimony about those confessions, he would usually be let free.
You can imagine how there were police and prosecutors who bought this. I think what becomes more difficult as he's used more widely in [Pinellas County,] Florida—where he helped send upward of 40 men to prison—at what point does someone say, "What are the odds that this guy in the jail has a better batting record than our best detectives?" No one ever says that.
Q: The book covers a lot of disturbing cases, but the one central to it is a murder case in Florida. Can you set the scene?
A: There was a 14-year-old girl named Shelly Boggio who was found in a body of water. She'd been stabbed over 30 times, and the assumption was that she'd been sexually assaulted.
The investigation quickly narrows down to a man named Jack Pearcy, who had a long history of violence against women. He was the last person seen with Boggio. When he's interviewed by investigators, he realizes they know too much. So he pivots to saying that he had his housemate—Jim Dailey—with him that night, and that it was Jim who committed this crime. Jim did not have that kind of record, and there's no physical or forensic evidence tying him to the crime, or any motive whatsoever.
Skalnik is brought in very shortly before the trial starts. He is moved in the jail to be close to where Jim Dailey was. Within 24 hours, he says he has procured Dailey's confession—a total stranger who's awaiting trial. It was a story that really played upon jurors' sympathies. He talked about how Jim Dailey had supposedly told him about stabbing Shelly Boggio to death and how she'd been staring at him in this pleading way, but she wouldn't die. It's this horrific image, and he is sentenced to death.
Q: What makes you think Dailey is actually innocent?
A: There have been over 200 people in the U.S. who were sentenced to death who have since been exonerated. We know that jailhouse informants—who are notoriously unreliable—are a factor in 25 percent of those wrongful convictions.
As far as Jim's case, there's no there there. When you see a case with three jailhouse informants, no physical evidence, no motive, and your quote-unquote "eyewitness" is the main suspect in the case? There are a lot of questions.
Q: To me, the secondary theme was that when credible evidence may exonerate someone after a jury has rendered a verdict, it is depressingly difficult to get another chance.
A: I am obsessed with this idea that the system is built to compound its own errors. When new evidence comes out—and there's a lot of new evidence that comes out over the years that really points toward his innocence—you would think that would be enough. For some very good reasons, a jury verdict is sacrosanct. But what you see is that courts really look backward at precedent and jury verdicts rather than forward at new evidence.
Jim gets terrific attorneys in this case—too late. They do incredible work, and it doesn't matter. Too many judges have rubber-stamped this testimony by Paul Skalnik. There's no way for the courts to essentially say, "Hey, let's go back and look at this holistically and see if any of this makes sense." It was shocking to me to see that.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity."
The entire interview can be read at:
https://share.google/1uifRh9hxnmoUUFjc
https://share.google/1uifRh9hxnmoUUFjc
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog. FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project; FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true;
