Case builds against jail informants

HARTFORD, Conn. — A movement to put jailhouse informants under a more powerful microscope before they testify is gaining traction around the country, a byproduct of new DNA testing technology that has exonerated dozens of people wrongly locked up based on informants’ lies.

Several states have moved to toughen regulations on the use of such informants, whose credibility has always been an issue because they’re motivated to get their sentences reduced.

The new rules include requiring pretrial hearings on whether prisoners’ testimony should be allowed and forcing prosecutors to disclose any deals with informants as well as informants’ history of testifying in other cases.

In Connecticut, Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont signed a bill in July that will create the nation’s first statewide system to track the use of jailhouse informants, including any benefits offered in exchange for their testimony.

“We’re really seeing the issue start to gain momentum around the country,” said Rebecca Brown, policy director for the New York-based Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the wrongly convicted.

Of the 365 people exonerated nationwide by DNA evidence, nearly one in five were convicted based in part on lying informants, according to the Innocence Project.

Federal court rulings and the Constitution do require prosecutors to turn over certain information about witnesses, including exculpatory evidence favorable to the defense. But civil liberties advocates say new laws are needed to specify what kind of information must be disclosed.

While prosecutors agree there needs to be skepticism about jailhouse informants, they say such witnesses offer crucial, truthful information that helps bring perpetrators to justice in many cases.

Fellow inmates were key in taking down Connecticut serial killer William Howell, who is serving a life sentence for killing seven people in 2003. One of Howell’s cellmates, convicted killer of four Jonathan Mills, told authorities that Howell talked about the killings and where he buried the victims. It’s not clear if Mills, also serving life in prison, received any benefits for providing the information. Officials have said inmates were among several people who applied for the $150,000 reward in Howell’s case.

Advocates for Connecticut’s new law cited the DNA-based exonerations of two men — Alfred Swinton and Miguel Roman — who were freed after they both spent about two decades in state prison for killings they did not commit. Bogus testimony by prisoners about confessions played roles in both cases.

The informants in the Swinton and Roman cases both denied on the witness stand that they were getting any benefits for their testimony. But the Swinton informant was ultimately released from prison early, and the Roman informant had several of his pending charges dismissed, defense lawyers said.

Connecticut’s new law also requires a judge to hold a pretrial hearing, if requested by the defense, on whether an informant’s testimony is reliable and admissible.

In November, Illinois lawmakers overrode a veto by then-Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican, and approved one of the nation’s toughest tests for allowing testimony by jailhouse informants. It requires judges to make pretrial inquiries into the veracity of prisoners’ testimony before allowing or barring it.

One of the advocates for the Illinois law was James Kluppelberg, who was exonerated after spending 25 years in prison for setting a fire in Chicago that killed a woman and her five children in 1984. A jailhouse informant who implicated Kluppelberg four years after the fire later recanted his story and admitted that he testified to reduce his potential prison time.

“I lost 25 years of my life because of his testimony,” said Kluppelberg, 55, of Illinois. “I didn’t get to see my three children grow up. I did not get to go to my mother’s funeral. I did not get to see my sisters grow up. All these things were stolen from me.”

Kluppelberg was freed in 2012.

“Nobody should ever have to suffer what I went through if it’s preventable,” he said. “If [the law] even stops it from happening to one person, it’s worth its weight in gold.”