The Throwaways
Police enlist young offenders as confidential informants. But the work is high risk, largely unregulated, and sometimes fatal. In the Sept. 3rd, 2012 issue of The New Yorker, I tell the stories of four young people who were killed working as informants — Rachel Hoffman, Shelly Hilliard, LeBron Gaither, and Jeremy McLean — and follow their families’ pursuit of accountability. Read the article here.
Photo by Peter Van Agtmael.
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This is the reporter who had interviewed me…we didn’t make the article, which is absolutely for the best. I do believe she did a great job.
On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 8:20 PM, Sarah Stillman
From a criminal defense attorney’s point of view, the tragedy of the confidential informant is not the danger that the snitch places him or herself in, or even the lax oversight of the process, but rather the degree to which they are willing to lie or mislead otherwise innocent people (and sometimes not so innocent people) into criminal activities in order to mitigate their situation. I have a client who is sitting in Broward County Jail right now because a CI, who was also his supervisor at work, targeted him while he was at a sober house trying to get clean. CI’s will turn on their best friend if it means shaving a few months off of their sentence. Perhaps this could be the subject of a follow-up report.