Informants

The law enforcement investigative process is a search for relevant and material facts for use in criminal prosecutions, and one of the most effective means of obtaining such information is through the use of an informant. An informant is an individual who has access to information about a past, ongoing, and/or future potential crime; who is motivated to bring this information to the attention of the proper authorities; and who is under the direct control of law enforcement. Informants are either walk-ins or approached by law enforcement, and a thorough background check is done on each to determine his or her potential access to information, motivations, and ability to be controlled. Informants provide information about all types of criminal activity, ranging from petty crimes to crimes that even threaten national and international security. They are a valuable resource and tool for law enforcement because the information they provide would be otherwise unavailable through other investigative means.

Access to information varies from one informant to another. Informants may have either direct personal knowledge of a crime, indirect knowledge through personal association, or outside knowledge through indirect association. The more informants are trusted by their criminal associates, the more access to incriminating information they have, and consequently, the more valuable they are to law enforcement. Active informants are those who provide law enforcement with information while remaining on the inside; they have the most access to information and are consequently the most valued by law enforcement. Other types of informants are eyewitnesses, anonymous tipsters, unwitting informants, and jailhouse informants.

However, the law imposes some limitations and restrictions on whether and how an informant can be developed by law enforcement. Law enforcement must obtain permission before using an individual who is on probation/parole or who is a juvenile. Also, the use of a jailhouse informant presents its own set of unique limitations and restrictions on whether the incriminating information they provide about other inmates will be admissible at trial. Although the determination of admissibility varies on a case-by-case basis, the general rule based on the landmark decision in Massiah v. United States (1964) is that a jailhouse informant cannot coerce another inmate by making an affirmative act to question or elicit incriminating information, otherwise Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights, protection against self-incrimination and right to counsel, respectively, will have been deemed to be violated.

Although informants are a valuable resource and tool for law enforcement, there is a negative connotation associated with them, reflected in commonly used terms such as “fink,” “rat,” “snitch,” or “stool pigeon.” This negative connotation stems from the fact that informants commit the ultimate betrayal of confidences when they provide incriminating information to law enforcement about their criminal associates. Law enforcement uses less disparaging terminology to name informants, such as “cooperating individual/witness,” or “confidential infor-mant/source.” Informants are observed with cautious suspicion at best, even in the eyes of the law, because often they may have ulterior motives for providing misleading or even false information to law enforcement in their attempt to milk the system from both ends. The most common informant ulterior motives include the desire to protect themselves from being detected in ongoing criminal activity, to hide a previous lie, or to protect or falsely implicate another. Based on federal and state statutes, false statements made by informants can carry terms of imprisonment depending on the severity of the misrepresentation.

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