QUOTE OF THE DAY: "In Schaffer’s Fort Bend case earlier this
month, Schaffer called for perjury charges to be filed against the
prosecutor who lied about three deals she made with jailhouse snitches,
then admitted to knowing some parts of one witness’s story were false.
In reality, though, Schaffer said he doesn’t think anything will happen
to her. “They’re allowed to keep doing it, when case
after case after case, it’s determined the witness testified falsely,”
he said. “I’ve been slack at going after prosecutors. I’ve been willing
to settle with my client getting a new trial. But I’m done doing that
now.”"
Defence Attorney Randy Schaffer;
-----------------------------------------
STORY: "The Problem With Jailhouse Snitches," by reporter Meagan Flynn, published by The Houston Press on November 28, 2016. November 28; ( Meagan Flynn covers criminal justice for The Houston Press.)
GIST: Houston defense attorney
Randy Schaffer says the only solid evidence Harris County prosecutors
had against his client in his 2002 capital murder trial was that he
admitted to being present when his drug dealer was killed. But
then a jailhouse witness named Karl Jones took the stand, and he told
the jury that, yes, actually, David Holford had confessed to committing
the murder while they were sitting in the privacy of a holdover cell.
Holford was convicted. Jailhouse
snitches are always a red flag to Schaffer, who says that in his
40-plus years of experience he has never once encountered jailhouse
witness testimony used ethically in a capital case. There’s a certain
irony about these jailhouse snitches: They are the most inherently
unreliable witnesses, yet they are often testifying in the most
high-stakes trials. Their testimony is generally only necessary when
most other evidence against defendants is weak — yet those are also the
cases in which a wrongful conviction is most likely. And so when
Schaffer encounters them in a capital case like Holford’s, he digs. To
start, Schaffer found Jones had only agreed to testify against Holford
if prosecutors could offer him something in return. In this case,
prosecutors told him they could write a nice letter to the parole board
if he cooperated — the hallmark of a jailhouse informant case, Schaffer
says. Next, Schaffer was able to dig up the prosecutors’
written summary of their first conversation with Jones — and it turns
out Jones had told them a different story than the one he told in court.
Schaffer says he originally told prosecutors Holford confessed while
they were linked on a chain of prisoners, chaperoned by deputies as they
walked through the underground tunnel leading from the courthouse to
the jail. Schaffer now alleges that prosecutors coached Jones into
changing his story so it would be more believable to a jury, then buried
any documentation of the first conversation and kept it from Holford’s
defense counsel. When Schaffer asked for the recording of the initial
conversation with Jones, Schaffer said he was told the recording didn’t
exist because Jones wouldn’t let prosecutors record it. “Since when is
the DA's office allowing a prison inmate to tell them what to do?” he
said. Schaffer
is set to go to court Monday to ask a judge to force prosecutors to
turn over all of their notes on Jones. It is the second time this month
Schaffer has gone after Harris County prosectors for allegedly eliciting
false testimony from a jailhouse snitch, then rewarding them with
favors in return — a problem Schaffer described as an “epidemic” in the
state of Texas and one requiring sweeping reform in the Legislature this
session. (Harris County District Attorney's Office spokesman Jeff
McShan said prosecutors were not comfortable commenting until after
January 1, which is when new DA Kim Ogg takes office.) Just a couple of weeks ago,
a Fort Bend County judge found that a Harris County prosecutor had lied to the jury
and defense team about backroom deals she had made with three jailhouse
witnesses, and had knowingly elicited false testimony from them that
contributed to a capital murder conviction. Schaffer had described the
prosecutor’s actions as “shameful.” But added that this was just one
example of a common tool used — and abused — by prosecutors.
“This
is a speck of sand on the beach of criminal cases,” Schaffer told us
after succeeding in the Fort Bend case. “The larger story is the
systemic misuse of so-called jailhouse witnesses by prosecutors across
the state to fill in holes in cases that they otherwise might not be
able to win. It's a true disgrace. It's a culture of dishonesty that has
fostered in prosecutors' offices across the state.”......... There’s an old saying that Innocence Project of Texas Executive
Director Mike Ware likes to apply to jailhouse snitches, and the chances
that they are telling the truth. It goes: “Even a blind hog finds an
acorn every once in a while," he said. "I guess every once in a while a
snitch is telling the truth.” Even if the defendant is
most certainly guilty, Ware says theoretically it's likely that the
inmate's story about that time his buddy confessed over mashed potatoes
is a lie. What Ware is most concerned about, however, is the prospect of
jailhouse informants contributing to wrongful convictions. And perhaps
there is no case more chilling than that of Cameron Todd Willingham. The
jailhouse snitch who met Willingham in the Navarro County Jail was the
first one to testify in his capital murder trial. He had told the jury
that Willingham confessed to setting the fire in his home that killed
his three young daughters, a crime for which Willlingham was convicted
and put to death — and for which he is now believed to be innocent. Over
the last decade, the forensic fire science used to convict Willingham
in the trial has been largely discredited as junk science, and the
jailhouse snitch himself, Johnny Webb, has admitted that Willingham
never confessed anything to him. Instead, Webb had just wanted a sweet
deal on his own punishment in exchange for helping out the prosecutors.
As chronicled by The Marshall Project, when the prosecutor asked whether Webb had been promised anything in exchange for his testimony, Webb said, “No, sir.” “As a matter of fact, I told you there is nothing I can do for you,” the prosecutor responded. That
prosecutor, Jim Jackson, had in fact single-handedly reduced Webb's
aggravated robbery from first-degree to second-degree without a deadly
weapon, and later campaigned for his early release from prison after
Webb served less than six years. This now-infamous case
went to trial almost 25 years ago, yet Ware says bribed jailhouse
witnesses giving false testimony for personal gain is still a rampant
problem in every criminal court in the state and possibly the country.
The National Registry of Exonerations has identified 138 cases in which
testimony from jailhouse informants has led to the conviction of an
innocent person who was later exonerated. “It’s a real problem,” Ware said, “and the kinds of cases it happens
in are heavily weighted toward the most serious crimes.” Of the 138
confirmed wrongful convictions, the vast majority of cases are murder
cases, and 27 defendants received death sentences. Ware
is currently working to vacate the conviction of a Bell County man named
George Powell, who Ware says was wrongfully convicted of an aggravated
robbery in 2009 and sentenced to 28 years in prison largely thanks to a
jailhouse informant. Ware says the snitch has now recanted his
testimony, and the Texas Forensic Science Commission has discredited as
junk science the surveillance video analysis the prosecution's expert
witness used to describe the robber’s height. As with most
jailhouse-witness cases, Ware said the other evidence was simply not
strong enough against Powell. “If it's a high-profile
case with weak evidence, then they need that jailhouse informant,” Ware
said. “The demand for an incentivized jailhouse informant goes way up,
and the [inmates] are not unaware of that. These are people who make
deadly weapons out of toothbrushes, who make bootleg whisky out of
potato skins. They understand how to fabricate a complete lie, and then
create value by selling it to a willing buyer — which is the
prosecutor.” If it were up to Schaffer and Ware, the law would bar offering any
benefits to jailhouse snitches in exchange for testimony. It would
require all jailhouse witnesses to take a polygraph before ever taking
the stand. And it would make it a crime for prosecutors to knowingly
elicit false testimony and allow their penitentiary informants to lie to
a jury. But restricting prosecutors’ use of jailhouse
witnesses would be an uphill climb in the Legislature, Schaffer said.
And that’s because prosecutors maintain hefty influence at the Capitol,
he said. Besides, the reason prosecutors value jailhouse
informants’ testimony is clear: What about cases in which prosecutors
are near certain the defendant committed the crime, but are concerned
that without a confession, a jury will not be convinced — and then a
murderer will walk free? That scenario may always spring
to legislators’ minds, Ware said — but it shouldn’t rule out
commonsense reforms that would prevent careless prosecutors from
soliciting false testimony from untrustworthy criminals..........In Schaffer’s Fort Bend case earlier this
month, Schaffer called for perjury charges to be filed against the
prosecutor who lied about three deals she made with jailhouse snitches,
then admitted to knowing some parts of one witness’s story were false.
In reality, though, Schaffer said he doesn’t think anything will happen
to her. “They’re allowed to keep doing it, when case
after case after case, it’s determined the witness testified falsely,”
he said. “I’ve been slack at going after prosecutors. I’ve been willing
to settle with my client getting a new trial. But I’m done doing that
now.”"
The entire story can be found at:
