Legal News

On Snitches and Stitches in Philly

By Ashby Jones

Snitches get stitches.

It’s a plot point you see all the time on television and in Hollywood — a witness to a violent crime testifies at trial, only to later suffer serious retribution, usually of the violent variety itself.

But how much of a problem is witness intimidation — really — in our nation’s court systems? A chilling Philadelphia Inquirer story out Monday reports that, at least in the City of Brotherly Love, it’s a gigantic problem.

“It’s endemic. People are frightened to death,” said District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham. “We’ve had witness after witness intimidated, threatened, frightened.”

Indeed, the Inquirer story is chock full of terrifying anecdotes. But what can a city like Philadelphia do to combat the problem? Two things, it appears: try to prosecute those who intimidate witnesses as well as guarantee the safety of those who do testify.

According to the story, witness intimidation convictions can be tough to land. Prosecutors charged about 1,000 people with witness intimidation between 2006 and 2008. Of resolved cases, prosecutors won a conviction on witness-intimidation charges only 28 percent of the time.

And without the ability to protect those who testify, it’s hard to make a dent in the problem.

“That fear, that’s real,” said Jamie Egan, a former city prosecutor. “When people would ask me if I could guarantee their safety, I would say, ‘Unfortunately, I cannot.’”

Part of the problem stems from the fact that funding for Philly’s witness protection program is down.

Statewide, according to the Inquirer, money for witness relocation has dropped off in recent years, a casualty of budget cuts and the faltering economy. While the Philadelphia program spent just over $11,000 per witness last year, the federal witness-protection program spends more than four times that.

Gerald Shur, the former federal prosecutor who founded the federal witness-protection program, said Philadelphia’s effort seemed badly underfunded and too short. Shur said that authorities, whether federal or local, needed to take the same care with witnesses as they might with DNA swabs or spent bullets.

"The witnesses have to be looked upon as necessary ingredients in a criminal trial. You take care of the necessary ingredients," Shur said. "And that evidence is the witness’s life."

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 14, 2009 (boomark / email).