PUBLISHER'S NOTE: What do police informants have to do with forensic science? (I'm glad you asked). Investigative Reporter Pamela Colloff give us a clue when she writes - at the link below - "I’ve wanted to write about jailhouse informants for a long time because they often appear in troubled cases in which the other evidence is weak." That's my experience as will as a criminal lawyer and an observer of criminal justice. Given the reality that jurors - thanks to the CSI effect - are becoming more and more insistent on the need for there to be forensic evidence, it is becoming more and more common for police to rely on shady tactics such as use of police snitches, staging lineups, coercing, inducing, or creating false confessions out of thin air, procuring false eyewitness testimony or concealing exculpatory evidence. "
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Perhaps the most serious problem that stems from the use of informants is the prevalence of false testimony. About a decade ago, the National Registry of Exonerations found that nearly a quarter of wrongful capital convictions were the result of testimony from jailhouse informants, who have an obvious incentive to offer up ostensibly useful information regardless of whether it is true."
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GIST: (This is one of the most thorough analysis of the risks post through use of jailhouse informants which I have read. It's really lengthy - so here is a taste. HL): "Most informants are, or have previously been, incarcerated.
The majority are likely poor and Black or brown—but it is hard to say precisely who informants are, because prosecutors and police departments are not required to document their use of them.
The vast majority of criminal charges in the U.S. result in plea deals, meaning that there is no trial at which the use of an informant might be forcibly disclosed. “We only see the tip of the iceberg,” Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Harvard Law School, told me, “when something goes wrong.”
Natapoff is the author of “Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice.”
In the book, she argues that there is an intentional opacity surrounding the use of informants, which helps to sustain an “almost entirely deregulated market for guilt and information.”
A person who is suspected of a crime or is facing punishment can avoid arrest or get a reduced sentence in return for information, but sometimes the inducement to snitch is far more modest—in one notorious instance, in California, a man was wrongly convicted of murder on the testimony of a jailhouse informant who later said that he was given twenty-five dollars and a pack of cigarettes to offer a damning story.
Informants can also be required to have sex, expose themselves to illegal drug use, or risk their lives as part of a coöperation deal. Essentially, Natapoff said, anything goes. “We have a Bill of Rights that constrains what the state can do,” she told me. “We have statutory codes that constrain what people can be convicted and punished for, and codes that say how much punishment is appropriate. And then we suspend nearly all those rules when it comes to informants.”
Perhaps the most serious problem that stems from the use of informants is the prevalence of false testimony.
About a decade ago, the National Registry of Exonerations found that nearly a quarter of wrongful capital convictions were the result of testimony from jailhouse informants, who have an obvious incentive to offer up ostensibly useful information regardless of whether it is true."
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-south/what-do-we-owe-a-prison-informant
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. 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. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/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;
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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!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
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