SNITCHES COME WITH A PRICE

Police Say They Can't Fight Drug War Without Them

Wearing a hooded jacket so his face was obscured, the 34-year-old man
slid into the back seat of the patrol car and laid down on the floor
so he couldn't be seen from the street.

Police Sgt. Michael Hamilton pulled away from the curb and drove
through darkened downtown streets as the man, still lying in the back
of the car, reeled off addresses of suspected drug houses. Hamilton
jotted down the information before stopping in front of the
informant's home to let him out.

"You need us,'' the man reminded the cop as he climbed out of the back
seat. "You need us, Michael.''

He's right.

In fact, prosecutors and police have become dependent -- addicted,
some critics say -- to confidential informants, those shadowy figures
who snitch on their criminal colleagues, mostly in return for cash or
leniency. As the war on drugs has escalated in recent years, so has
the use of confidential informants. In some cases, police are using
testimony from confidential informants as a shortcut to a conviction.
It's easier than the painstaking process of collecting other evidence.

But this dependence is making the criminal justice system vulnerable
to challenge from defense attorneys. A panel of federal judges ruled
recently that providing leniency for testimony amounted to bribery,
giving defense attorneys a potent weapon in challenging cases based on
confidential informants.

"Many (police) departments are getting more calls than they can deal
with,'' said E. Michael McCann, district attorney in Milwaukee County,
Wis., and former chairman of the American Bar Association's Criminal
Justice Section. "So you inevitably resort to as efficient a system as
possible.'' That means snitches.

The use of these confidential informants isn't new. What is new is the
frequency with which they are used. Credit the war on drugs and
stronger forfeiture laws -- which help pay snitches -- for the expansion.

In Albany City Court, for example, 93 percent of the search warrants
in drug cases this year are based on information from snitches. That
was up from 1988, when CIs provided information in 35 of 44 search
warrants for drug cases, or 80 percent.

Law enforcement agencies throughout the Capital Region will give these
shadowy figures at least $60,000 this year in return for information
about drug dealing and other crimes. Nationally, the payroll for
informants nearly quadrupled between 1985, when it stood at $25
million, and 1993, when it had reached $97 million, according to a
1995 National Law Journal series.

The Albany office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration paid
$12,530 to CIs for information and services in the year ending Sept.
30, 1992. That amount is more than double this year.

"Big money has prostituted the process,'' said Hugo A. Rodriguez, a
Miami-based federal public defender and former FBI agent. "The result
is we have a system where we've made everyone a Judas.''

Defense attorneys have long argued that many of these informants are
criminals who will say anything for cash or leniency, raising
questions about the credibility of their information. And to keep
confidential informants on the front lines police sometimes give their
favorite snitches a break when they get in trouble with the law.

"In many instances, you are dealing with a reptile in sheep's
clothing,'' said Terence L. Kindlon, an Albany defense attorney.

But lots of cops and prosecutors swear by confidential informants,
saying the war on drugs couldn't be waged without them. Dealers have
little problem identifying cops no matter how well disguised they are.
So police have no choice but to turn to unsavory characters in their
efforts to combat drugs.

"The Mormon Tabernacle Choir was a little too busy to come out and
make buys for us,'' Albany Detective Timothy J. Murphy deadpanned.

And, police and prosecutors insist, they are careful to verify the
information snitches give them. Any informer who they suspect is
continuing a life of crime, authorities say, is dropped.

Schenectady officials noted that in 1996 and 1997, working with the
DEA, they snared 150 defendants on drug and drug-related violence
charges. Confidential informants helped in about half of those cases.
In fact, the man lying on the back seat of Hamilton's car made
undercover buys and provided information leading to about 30 of those
arrests -- good information, police said, with 90 percent of the cases
so far resulting in guilty pleas.

But a recent federal court decision in Colorado is raising troubling
questions about how dependent prosecutors and cops had become on
informants. A three-judge panel ruled that offering leniency in
exchange for testimony amounts to bribery.

Albany Law School Professor Daniel G. Moriarty predicts the so-called
Singleton decision will be overturned. "It's unthinkable judges would,
out of the blue, turn the system on its ear,'' he said.

But, Moriarty said, "It does serve to focus society's consideration on
the problem of relying too heavily on untrustworthy witnesses.'' The
decision shook up the law enforcement community, he said, "because
everyone knows there's a glimmer of truth in what the judges are saying.''

Police and prosecutors say the system generally works because there
are checks and balances to prevent abuses. "We never take anything as
gospel,'' Murphy said.

Police say they cross-reference information and check details. And if
an informant is going to buy drugs on behalf of the cops, police
perform a strip-search before and after the transaction, keep the
informant under surveillance, and send the informant in wearing some
sort of hidden recording device so the deal is done on tape.

Prosecutors' cases are threatened, legal experts say, if they don't
ensure that their cases are backed up with more than testimony from a
snitch.

"If all you had was a snitch testifying, you'd never get any
convictions,'' said Thomas J. Neidl, a defense attorney who used to
prosecute drug cases for the Albany County District Attorney's office.
"They build the case around that, corroborate that. I've never used
just a snitch, even in the old days.''

But the incentive for the informant is to provide useful information,
sometimes so a criminal can save his or her hide. "Leniency -- that's
the coin of the realm when you are a criminal,'' said McCann, the
Wisconsin prosecutor.

Rodriguez said the federal government instituted "Draconian'' drug
laws in 1987 that provide harsh sentences with one escape hatch -- "to
be a rat for the government.''

Kindlon said, "If you are looking at, say, five years in prison and
not as an abstract proposition but as being there and being someone's
girlfriend, and a police officer says, 'I'm looking for information on
X, and if you help me out, I'll help you out.' Well, then miracles
begin to happen.''

One of Hamilton's informants apparently received at least some
benefit. A woman who served as an informant in the past said she would
provide valuable information if Hamilton would help her out on a
charge of driving with a suspended license.

"It paid off in a big way,'' Hamilton said. Using information from
this informant, police charged three people with dealing drugs and
seized 200 bags of heroin, along with two ounces of cocaine. "She has
given me some nice arrests,'' Hamilton said.

In exchange, Hamilton talked to the district attorney's office about
the information the woman had provided. Department of Motor Vehicle
records show the informant had been convicted of aggravated unlicensed
driving three times. The first time, she was sentenced to seven days
in jail, the second time she was fined $275, and the third time she
was fined $200, records show.

She was later charged with selling drugs, when another law enforcement
agency grew suspicious of her activities. Hamilton dropped her as an
informant. "If they are helping us arrest drug dealers and they're
doing the same thing, they're on their own,'' Hamilton said.

Officers don't have the power to guarantee charges will be dropped,
but they can put in a good word with prosecutors, who will often put a
case on hold to see if an informant comes through with valuable
information.

Rodriguez contended that some cops and prosecutors are getting lazy.
Police can use undercover officers from other jurisdictions, so crooks
won't recognize them, he said, but they turn to informants because
it's easier.

"Before, they did it the old-fashioned way,'' Rodriguez said. "They
just went out there and hit the streets. You meet people, talk to
people and put in an undercover agent when necessary. Just watch (the
movie) 'Donnie Brasco' to see how they did it.''

But that kind of leg work takes time and effort, and many police
departments are already struggling to keep up with the drug trade in
their borders.

One case locally that raised questions about the way confidential
informants are handled is career thief Gary Evans, who twice worked as
a police informant before admitting earlier this year that he had
killed five people, including two before he was first signed up to
work as an informant.

Evans, who admitted to chopping up one man's body with a chain saw,
was already one of the area's most notorious criminals before he made
a dramatic escape from a prison van, leaped from a Hudson River bridge
and plunged to his death Aug. 14.

Critics claimed cops coddled Evans and questioned whether he would
have been in prison, rather than free committing murder, if he hadn't
helped police.

"Gary Evans is the poster boy for what's wrong with confidential
informants,'' Kindlon said.

Police say they never suspected Evans was a murderer when they used
him as an informant, and once he became a murder suspect, they hunted
him down and got him to confess to homicides that otherwise would have
gone unsolved.

"Hindsight is great,'' State Police Capt. John A. Byrne said. "On Dec.
7, did they know the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor?''

Evans received money for the tips he provided cops, police say. He
first worked as an informant in May 1991 when he contacted State
Police Investigator James D. Horton, who had arrested Evans before and
was then working on a regional drug task force. "He approached me out
of the blue,'' Horton said. "He wanted to see if he could make some
money.''

As part of a sting operation, Evans arranged to sell $36,000 worth of
marijuana to a man who was suspected of being a Troy drug dealer. The
man was never charged with a crime, but police seized a paper bag
containing $36,000, and Evans received $2,700 for his work, Horton
said.

Evans helped police again in 1994 when he volunteered to enter jail to
gather information that ultimately helped convict Jeffrey D. Williams
for the abduction and murder of Karolyn Lonczak. "Evans again
approached me and offered the scenario of going to jail,'' Horton
said. "He was against violence against women.''

Evans did not receive anything in exchange for testifying against
Williams, Horton said. "That was a freebie,'' he said. "We made up
charges and put him in a cell next to Williams and he got
admissions.''

Kindlon, who represented Williams, claims Evans was lying when he
testified about a supposed jailhouse confession by Williams, and he
questioned whether Evans did, in fact, cooperate as a "freebie.''

"He never did nothing for nothing,'' he said.

"I'm not holding police officers responsible for the murders, but
Evans couldn't have done the murders if he was locked up, and he
should have been locked up more,'' Kindlon said. "He wasn't in jail
because he could play the system like a fiddle. He was like the
supreme weasel.''

Byrne said police arrested Evans numerous times and he served time for
the charges. "If he does his time and is released, we can't control
that,'' he said.

After getting information on Williams and leaving jail, Evans stole a
rare leather-bound book of John James Audubon lithographs. He was
eventually sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for charges
related to the Audubon book, but before being sentenced, Evans
testified against Williams in May 1995.

Horton said Evans' testimony was not critical to Williams' conviction. And
after finding out about the stolen lithographs, Horton said he told Evans:
"We're done. You broke the rules. While you are working with us, you can't
be involved in criminal activity.''

Three years later, Horton began to suspect Evans had murdered a
Saratoga Springs man, Timothy W. Rysedorph, who was last seen alive
with Evans.

"I had no idea, of course, he was involved in these murders,'' Horton
said. "I never would have used him if I had.''

It was those suspicions that prompted Horton and other police to track
down Evans and arrest him. His suicide leap came while he was in
custody after that arrest.

Police say informants are providing a service that most people
wouldn't want to have anything to do with. "Would you walk into a
hell-hole crack house to buy $25 worth of crack?'' Murphy asked.

"It's an unpalatable way of doing business,'' McCann acknowledged.
"People don't like to see guys get a break. But you make an assessment
that it's worth the trade-off to give a guy a break to get a higher-up
guy. Like any other judgment, there are going to be people who disagree.''

Checked-by: Patrick Henry