Sometimes it seems that the U.S. Department of Justice is dedicated to undermining the trust of the American people in our system of justice.
USATODAY has reported that after DEA promised to never again use a serial perjurer as an informant -- whose testimony is crucial to establishing facts in any case he is involved in -- they have started using him again. Andrew Chambers, Jr. was used by DEA Administrator Michelle Leonhart when she was just a case agent in St. Louis, Missouri, early in her career, and later when she was promoted to be a managing agent in California.
What obligation do federal prosecutors have to assure that their witnesses are telling the truth? When you read the official U.S. Attorneys Manual on this point, yous slowly realize that it doesn't seem to be at all clear. All they are required to do is to turn over to the defendant material that might impeach the testimony of their witnesses, but it is not exactly clear when or just how far this is supposed to go. In other words, maybe, at some point, the fact that the informant who set up the accused is a liar, might be disclosed to the defense.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
DEA's addiction to a lying informant!
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Why guilty criminals sometimes go free -- a price of police perjury in drug cases
Gene Weingarten, a long time reporter and columnist at The Washington Post, has an excellent report in the Sunday Outlook section on his jury service last week in the D.C. Superior Court. Even though he was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was guilty of selling $10 worth of heroin to an undercover officer, he was going to vote to acquit. But he was excused as an alternate. There was a mistrial because the jury could not agree and he learned that the jury split 10 to 2 to acquit.
Why vote to acquit if the defendant was guilty?
Because the cops lied. "...the willingness to cheat, I think, is a poisonous corruption of a system designed to protect the innocent at the risk of occasionally letting the guilty walk free...I think a police officer willing to cheat is more dangerous than a two-bit drug peddler."
This is a decades old problem with the police and their crusade against drugs.
It is a problem that I spoke about on PBS FRONTLINE's "Snitch" in January 1999.
This is problem that could be corrected by police managers and prosecutors. If prosecutors referred lying police officers to grand juries, and police managers cared, they could win some cases they are losing. But too often they blame losing cases on witness intimidation rather than the public's disgust with police perjury.
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