Federal Confidential Informant Cases: CI Reliability Challenges

The prosecution's star witness will testify that you confessed to the crime. That witness is facing 20 years in federal prison for unrelated charges. If he testifies against you, prosecutors will reduce his sentence to three years. This isn't a hypothetical scenario Todd Spodek has seen play out in courtrooms across the federal system. This is how confidential informant cases actually work. The person testifying isn't a neutral observer who happened to witness something. He's someone whose freedom depends entirely on you being convicted.

Here's what prosecutors won't tell you upfront: confidential informants are the most dangerous weapon in the federal criminal justice system. They're paid liars with immunity who get rewarded for manufacturing evidence against you, operating in a system with almost no regulation or oversight. Over 45% of wrongful capital convictions are due to lying criminal informants - that's the leading cause of wrongful death sentences. In murder cases that were later cleared by DNA evidence, jailhouse informants contributed false testimony in 50% of those convictions. This isn't an occasional problem. This is systemic.

The confidential informant system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed. Prosecutors need convictions. Informants need deals. The system brings them together and calls the transaction "cooperation." What you call that transaction is different. You call it purchased testimony from someone whose career depends on saying what the government wants to hear. And once you understand how the incentives work, you realize the person testifying against you isn't credible. They're profitable.

The Cooperation Economy: What Informants Get That You Don't Know About

The informant testifying against you might be getting complete immunity. Or ten years off their sentence. Or cash payments. Or immigration status for family members. Or charges dropped entirely. Your not facing a witness. Your facing someone whose freedom, money, or legal status depends on you being convicted.

Minneapolis Police Department paid out $305,948 to confidential informants between 2019 and 2022. That's just one city, just three years, just the payments they disclosed. Some informants have made millions testifying for the government over their careers. It's literally a business model - get arrested, become a CI, testify in exchange for payment or sentencing reductions, repeat.

But the economic incentives go beyond cash. Informants work for:

• Sentencing reductions (sometimes taking 20-year sentences down to probation)
• Immunity from prosecution for ongoing crimes
• Dropped charges
• Help with bail
• Witness protection and relocation assistance
• Immigration benefits for themselves or family memebers

Your conviction might be the price of someone's green card. Or the difference between their life sentence and walking free in three years.

In Schofield v. Palmer, a death penalty case, the state paid a confidential informant $500 to implicate the defendant as a murderer. Prosecutors suppressed the payment. The defendant nearly got executed. Five hundred dollars bought testimony that almost ended someones life. That's the going rate in some jurisdictions. The person testifying didn't witness a murder - he was paid $500 to say he did.

Here's the part prosecutors don't disclose voluntarily: the more serious the informants own criminal charges, the MORE valuable their testimony becomes. A murderer facing life in prison has maximum incentive to cooperate. That same murderer becomes the prosecutions "credible witness" against you for a drug charge. The system flips reliability on its head - the worse the criminal, the better the witness, because the worse the criminal, the more desperate they are to deal.

And heres what defense attorneys know that juries dont: the defense is frequently not privy to the benefits recieved by informants. Brady violations involving undisclosed informant payments, deals, and promises are extremely common. Your sitting in a courtroom watching someone testify against you. The jury thinks he's a witness. You don't know he's getting paid. You don't know his charges are being dropped. You don't know he's testified in 12 other cases and gotten deals in all of them. That information exists in a file somewhere. Prosecutors are supposed to turn it over. They often dont.

The 45% Problem: When "Reliable Testimony" Becomes the #1 Cause of Wrongful Executions

Over 45% of wrongful capital convictions are traced to lying criminal informants. Read that again. Not 5%. Not 10%. Over 45%. The leading cause of wrongful death sentences in the United States is false testimony from confidential informants. And courts keep allowing the testimony anyway.

In cases where defendants were later exonerated by DNA evidence, jailhouse informants contributed false testimony in 50% of wrongful murder convictions. If your convicted of murder based on jailhouse snitch testimony, there's a coin-flip chance it's a lie. These arn't outliers. This is systemic.

Between 15% and 20% of all DNA exonerations featured false jailhouse informant testimony. Some studies put the number at 17%. Others at 20%. Even at the low end - 15% - that means in one out of every seven cases where DNA proved someones innocence, a jailhouse informant had lied to help convict them.

How the Mechanism Works

Here's the mechanism: Your arrested and placed in county jail awaiting trial. Your cellmate is facing 20 years on his own charges. He tells prosecutors you "confessed" to him. Did you confess? No. Can you prove you didnt? Also no. How do you prove a conversation never happened? The prosecutors offer your cellmate a plea deal - testify against you, get five years instead of 20. He testifies. The jury beleives him because why would someone lie under oath? Your convicted. He walks in three years. You serve 25.

The informant didn't need to witness anything. He just needed to say he did. And the system rewarded him for saying it.

In some cases, informants recant years later - admitting they lied. In cases involving jailhouse informants who helped secure convictions, 24% of those informants later recanted their testimony. One in four. They admitted they made it up. But by that point, the defendant has already served years. Even if the recantation leads to a new trial, you cant un-serve the time you already did. Your family lost there home posting bail. Your career is destroyed. "Winning" the appeal doesn't undo the damage.

Prosecutors know informants lie. Defense attorneys know informants lie. Judges know informants lie. The system keeps using them because convictions matter more than accuracy. Federal conviction rate is 93%. Maintaining that rate requires testimony prosecutors can control. And informants - who are beholden to the government for their freedom - provide exactly that. They'll say what prosecutors need them to say.

The Informant File You'll Never See: Brady Violations as Standard Practice

Theres a file. It's called the confidential informant file, or the source file. It contains every deal the informant has cut with law enforcement. Every payment they've recieved. Every time theyve lied in previous cases. Every validation assessment of there reliability. Every promise of leniency. Every pending charge they're working off. Under Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States, prosecutors are required to disclose exculpatory and impeachment evidence. That file is exactly the kind of evidence Brady requires. And you'll probably never see it.

In State v. Williams, a Maryland case, the prosecuting attorney didnt even know her own witness was a paid confidential informant because other prosecutors in her office didn't tell her. The court ruled she's presumed to have knowledge anyway - Brady violation. You can commit a Brady violation for information you don't actually have. Thats how broken the system is. Prosecutors can't even track their own informants, but their presumed to know what deals were made.

When defense attorneys do get access to informant files, its often only a "summary" rather than the complete file. Prosecutors claim the full file is protected by "informant privilege" or contains "law enforcement sensitive" information. The validation assessments - which supposedly track the informants reliability over time - are routinely witheld. An assessment you can't challenge isnt validation. Its theater.

What's Hidden in the Informant File

What's in the file that prosecutors don't want you to see?

• The informants complete criminal history
• Pending charges there working off
• Proffer agreements detailing exactly what they have to deliver to get there deal
• Payment records showing how much theyve been paid for previous testimony
• Impeachment evidence from prior cases were they lied or exagerated
• Validation assessments that might show the informant has failed reliability tests
• Communications between the informant and handlers that reveal coaching or pressure to enhance testimony

In Schofield v. Palmer, the state paid a confidential informant $500 to implicate the defendant as a murderer. They suppresed the payment. The defendant nearly got executed before the Brady violation was discovered. Five hundred dollars was enough to withold. The informant testified. The jury convicted. The defendant sat on death row. All because prosecutors didnt disclose a $500 payment.

Even when Brady violations are discovered years later, the damage is already done. Chain of events: Prosecutor has informant file showing witness has lied in three prior cases. Prosecutor doesnt disclose it, claiming "privilege." You cant impeach the witness with there history. Jury beleives them. Your convicted. During your appeal, years later, you discover the file existed. You win a Brady claim and get a new trial. But by that point, witnesses have scattered, memories have faded, and youve already served years in federal prison. Your family lost their savings. Even if you "win," you cant get those years back.

The use of confidential informants is essentially unregulated by courts. No mandatory oversight. No requirement for corroboration. No limits on payments. No centralized tracking of informants who testify in multiple cases. Prosecutors make deals with criminals, promise them freedom or money in exchange for testimony, and judges just allow it. The Brady violations aren't accidental. There a feature of a system that prioritizes convictions over disclosure.

Professional Snitches and Imaginary Witnesses: When the System Manufactures Testimony

Some confidential informants arent occasional cooperators. There professional witnesses. They've testified in ten cases. Twenty cases. Fifty cases. Each time, they get paid or get sentencing reductions. Each time, there testimony results in a conviction. And here's the perverse incentive: the more times an informant testifies successfully, the more credible they apear to juries in subsequent cases. Courts cite prior testimony as evidence of the informant's reliability.

But think about what that actually means. The more times someone testifies and gets rewarded for it, the more incentivized they are to keep producing testimony. Success as a witness makes them LESS reliable, not more, because now they have a professional stake in continuing to provide the kind of testimony prosecutors want. They've built a career on it. Some of these professional snitches have made millions over there careers testifying for the government.

One informant was paid $100 each time he testified. He testified dozens of times. Do the math. Another made millions. The government isn't paying for truth. Its paying for testimony. And when you pay someone to testify, your not getting a witness. Your getting a performance.

The Houston Pecan Park Raid: When the Informant Doesn't Exist

In some cases, the informant doesn't even exist. Houston, 2019. The Pecan Park raid. A narcotics officer claimed a confidential informant had made a "controlled buy" - the informant bought drugs while the officer watched. Based on that claim, police executed a deadly no-knock raid. Two residents were killed. Later investigation revealed the buy never happened. The confidential informant probably didnt even exist. The officer had fabricated the entire thing. An imaginary informant led to real deaths.

How many "real" informants are just as fictional? If an officer can invent an informant out of thin air and get a raid approved, how hard is it to exagerate an informant's reliability? Or enhance there testimony? Or coach them on what to say? The oversight is so minimal that fabrication is possible. And if complete fabrication is possible, partial fabrication - exaggerating what an informant said, or "helping" them remember details - is happening constantly.

Derek Finkbeiner, an Arkansas sheriff, was arrested in November 2023 for obstruction. His crime? He falsely portrayed a drug dealer as a confidential informant to interfere with an FBI drug investigation. Sheriffs arent just using informants. There faking informants to protect criminals. If law enforcement will fake an informant to protect someone, they'll fake or enhance an informant to convict someone.

The Professional Snitch Career Arc

The professional snitch career arc works like this:

1. Face serious charges
2. Become a CI
3. Testify successfully in exchange for sentencing reduction
4. Get paid
5. Need money again or face new charges later
6. Become a CI again in a different case
7. Testify again
8. Build "credibility" based on prior successful testimony
9. Courts cite that prior testimony as evidence your reliable
10. Testify in more cases
11. Over a career, twenty defendants get convicted based on testimony from someone whose job is professional lying

The system calls this "cooperation." Defense attorneys call it manufactured evidence.

The Trusted Informant Who Lied for 10 Years: Alexander Smirnov and the Collapse of "Validation"

Alexander Smirnov was a trusted FBI confidential informant for over ten years. The FBI had worked with him on multiple cases. He was validated. Reliable. Credible. Then in June 2020, after "expressing bias" about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, Smirnov fabricated an entire bribery scheme. He claimed Biden and his son had recieved millions in bribes from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Congressional Republicans spent months building an impeachment inquiry based on Smirnov's allegations. Hearings were held. Investigations launched. The claims were treated as credible because Smirnov was a long-term, validated FBI source. Then he admitted he made it all up. The bribery scheme didnt happen. He fabricated the whole thing. In December 2024, he was sentenced to six years in federal prison.

If a confidential informant trusted by the FBI for over a decade can completely fabricate a case, what does "trusted informant" even mean?

The FBI keeps validation assessments - files tracking an informant's reliability over time. Smirnov passed those assessments for ten years. Then he lied about a presidential candidate and sparked a congressional investigation based on complete fiction. The validation system didnt catch it. The FBI's vetting didnt catch it. He was "trusted" right up until he admitted he wasnt trustworthy.

Whitey Bulger: The FBI's Serial Killer Informant

Whitey Bulger was an FBI confidential informant for decades. The FBI protected him while he ran Bostons Irish mob. Even as he continued committing murders. He corrupted two FBI agents - John Connolly and John Morris. The FBI's most famous informant was a serial killer they shielded from prosecution. And the FBI kept using him because his information was "valuable." Valuable to the FBI's cases. Not valuable to the truth. Not valuable to his victims.

The pattern repeats: law enforcement develops a relationship with an informant. The informant provides useful information in early cases. Trust builds. The informant becomes a go-to source. Then - sometimes years later - it turns out the informant was lying, or committing crimes, or fabricating evidence. By that point, how many convictions were based on there testimony? How many of those convictions were wrongful? And how many of those wrongful convictions will ever be discovered?

When the validation system allows a ten-year informant to fabricate a presidential bribery scheme, or allows an FBI informant to commit murders for decades, the problem isnt a few bad informants. The problem is the system itself. There's no meaningful oversight. No independent verification. No consequences for informants who lie. And no way for defendants to access the validation files to challenge the so-called reliability.

What Happens When the "Choice" Is Prison or Death: Rachel Hoffman and the Human Cost

Rachel Hoffman was 23 years old. In 2008, Tallahassee Police caught her with a small amount of marijuana and ecstasy. She was a college graduate. No violent history. Just a small drug charge. Police gave her a choice: become a confidential informant and work off the charge, or face serious prosecution. She "chose" to become an informant. Her choice was between prison or working as a CI. She didnt know there was a third option. Death.

Tallahassee PD sent Rachel into a sting operation to buy drugs, a gun, and ammunition from dealers. The operation was botched. The dealers murdered her. Her body was found two days later near Perry, Florida. She was 23. She didnt have to die. She was leverage. Police used her to make a case. When the operation went wrong, she paid with her life.

Rachel's death led to "Rachel's Law" in Florida - legislation requiring stricter protections for confidential informants. But most states still dont have those protections. And even in Florida, the law doesnt eliminate the core problem: people facing relatively minor charges are coerced into becoming informants in dangerous operations. The "choice" isnt really a choice. Its comply or face the full weight of prosecution. Some pick compliance and end up dead.

The "House of Death": When ICE Pays a Murderer

ICE Informant No. 913, known as "Lalo," participated in multiple murders while on the ICE payroll. In one murder, Lalo secretly recorded himself holding the victims legs while the victim was strangled, suffocated, and beaten with a shovel. He told his ICE handlers about the murders. They knew. They kept paying him. The case became known as the "House of Death" because multiple killings took place at one house in Juarez, Mexico. An ICE official later admitted: "Had management been fully informed, we could have implemented strategies that would have ultimately safeguarded more lives."

But management WAS informed. Lalo reported the murders. He recorded them. ICE kept him on the payroll because his information was useful. The agency paying for intelligence about murder was paying the murderer. Lalo's information helped ICE build cases. That mattered more than the fact that he was killing people.

These arent edge cases. These are the logical outcomes of an unregulated system that prioritizes convictions and case-building over human life. When you give law enforcement unchecked authority to recruit informants, offer them immunity, and deploy them in dangerous operations with no oversight, people die. Sometimes its the informants themselves, like Rachel Hoffman. Sometimes its the informants victims, like the people Lalo murdered. Sometimes its innocent bystanders in botched raids based on informant tips.

The Houston Pecan Park raid killed two residents based on a narcotics officers claim that a CI had made a controlled buy. The buy never happened. The CI might not have existed. Two people died because of an imaginary informant. When the system allows officers to fabricate informants, and allows informants to commit murders while on the payroll, the system isnt protecting public safety. Its creating danger.

Fighting Back: Exposing Incentives and Forcing Disclosure When Your Freedom Depends on a Paid Liar

If a confidential informant is involved in your federal case, your fighting someone whose freedom, money, or immigration status depends on you being convicted. That's not a witness. Thats a paid performer. And your defense has to expose the performance.

Strategy 1: Demand the Informant File

First: demand the informant file. Under Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States, prosecutors must disclose exculpatory and impeachment evidence. The informant's cooperation agreement, payment records, prior false statements, pending charges there working off, and validation assessments are all impeachment evidence. File a motion to compel disclosure. If prosecutors claim privilege, force them to justify it. Make them explain to the judge why the informants deal and criminal history should be hidden from the jury.

Strategy 2: Expose the Incentive Structure

Second: expose the incentive structure. If the informant is getting ten years off there sentence for testifying, the jury needs to know that. If there getting paid, the jury needs to know that. If there working off pending charges, the jury needs to know that. Cross-examination should focus on one question: What are you getting in exchange for this testimony? Make the informant admit, on the record, that there freedom depends on your conviction.

Strategy 3: Investigate the Informant's History

Third: investigate the informant's history. Have they testified in other cases? Did they get deals in those cases too? Have they lied before? Are there prior impeachment issues? Some informants are professional witnesses who've testified dozens of times. If your facing a professional snitch, the jury should know there looking at someone whose career is testifying for money and sentencing reductions.

Strategy 4: Challenge Corroboration

Fourth: challenge corroboration. Is the informants testimony the only evidence, or is there independent corroboration? In 13% of DNA exoneration cases, the ONLY evidence was jailhouse informant testimony. If your case is built entirely on an informant's word, with no physical evidence, no other witnesses, and no corroboration, that's a house of cards. Make the prosecutor prove there case doesnt depend entirely on purchased testimony.

Strategy 5: File a Franks Motion

Fifth: file a Franks motion if theres evidence the informant lied to obtain a warrant. In Franks v. Delaware, the Supreme Court held that defendants can challenge the truthfulness of statements in a warrant affidavit. If an informant provided false information to establish probable cause, and the officer knew or should have known it was false, the warrant can be challenged and the evidence suppressed.

How Spodek Law Group Fights Informant Cases

At Spodek Law Group, we've defended clients were confidential informant testimony was the centerpiece of the prosecutions case. We know how these cases are built. We know were the weaknesses are. And we know that exposing the informants incentive to lie is often the most effective defense strategy. Todd Spodek has cross-examined informants who were getting there sentences reduced by 15 years in exchange for testimony. The jury needs to hear that. They need to understand that the "witness" there watching isnt credible - there profitable.

We believe defendants deserve to know how the system actually works. That includes knowing when witnesses are paid to testify. It includes knowing that Brady violations involving informant files are shockingly common. And it includes knowing that over 45% of wrongful death sentences come from lying informants. If you dont understand the incentive structure, you cant fight it. If your attorney isnt demanding the informant file and exposing the cooperation agreement, your not getting a real defense.

The discovery violation chain works like this: Prosecutor doesnt disclose the informants deal. You cant impeach the witness. Jury beleives there testimony. Your convicted. Years later, you discover the Brady violation. You appeal. Maybe you get a new trial. But by then, youve already served years. Your family lost everything. Even if you win, you cant undo that damage. The only way to avoid that chain is to force disclosure before trial. Demand the file. Demand the cooperation agreement. Demand the payment records. Make the prosecutor turn over everything Brady requires. And if they dont, make them explain to the judge why there hiding it.

If your facing federal charges and a confidential informant is involved, call Spodek Law Group at 212-300-5196. We understand how informant cases are prosecuted. We know how to expose the incentives. And we know that your freedom shouldnt depend on testimony from someone getting paid or freed to say your guilty. The system is designed to favor the prosecution. That doesnt mean you dont fight back. It means you fight smarter.