How does drug snitching work

It was ridiculous. Attorney Bret Grayson, used more than 30 imprisoned informants to compile his evidence of a drug conspiracy. As the case neared trial, U. District Court Judge Tucker Melancon began having misgivings and sought to bar many of the informants from testifying.

The case, despite being already weakened by a lack of hard evidence and the fact that Colomb family members had continued to work construction and oilfield jobs while supposedly netting millions in the illicit drug trade, moved forward. The jury convicted the family in and they went to prison. Then another convicted federal prisoner, Quinn Alex, in a letter to his former prosecutor, revealed the scope and details of a snitching-for-hire scheme at the Federal Correctional Institution in Three Rivers, Texas, the source of the information used by U.

Attorney Grayson in the Colomb case. A motion for a new trial soon followed, and Judge Melancon vacated the convictions and freed the family. It breaks my heart But the real victim is justice itself, in the form of wrongful convictions, official corruption, public deception and the weakened legitimacy of the criminal justice system in the eyes of the public. The use of snitches has become so prevalent that the practice and its damaging effects are the subject of a book, Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice , by Alexandra Natapoff, published in April Under such scrutiny the practice of snitching, spurred by harsh sentencing laws and win-at-any-cost prosecutors, might gradually fade.

The first video was released in and a sequel followed in ; Baltimore police have called the DVDs a form of witness intimidation. Suge is now serving a year federal prison term. In an ironic twist of fate, his year-old son, Najee Thomas, was murdered in April , shot in the head as he sat inside his home in the Cherry Hill section of Baltimore. Sources: www. Being an informant is a tough way to make a living.

Usually the work is done by people who are desperate because they have been caught trafficking drugs and they are working to get their charges dropped or reduced. Usually the best paid informants are the federal informants. He had been an education major, but has now switched career paths since a felony on his record would bar him from ever teaching in a classroom.

Jeff is not alone. State College Police Spokesman Capt. Dana Leonard estimates that nine out of ten of those arrests were made with the use of a confidential informant, or drug snitch. Leonard also estimated that half of all charges in Centre County, including drug possession with intent to deliver, involve college students.

Madeira denied that the use of drug snitches in Centre County is as ineffective as his critics say. He said that while large quantities of small time drug dealers will get busted, the process does occasionally succeed in bringing bigger fish to justice. Madeira declined to provide the rest of his list to Voices, and could not elaborate on the quantities of drugs involved with specific arrests or the dollar amounts.

He did say that in Centre County, a half-ounce to an ounce of cocaine or a pound of marijuana are considered big busts. To what end? According to the article, a large majority of the 28 arrests were students, and most of the students were snitches. People agree to work as drug informants for a variety of reasons, including desperation, excitement, retribution or a sense of civic mindedness. Here is a list of the common questions that people ask about drug informants and what they face with their line of work.

If the confidential informant was the person who initiated a crime would that be considered a form of entrapment? Can a confidential informant serve on a jury in a criminal trial? Does Spokane have a lot of paid confidential informants? What happens if my lawyer made a mistake and was representing my confidential informant at the same time?