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Hinojosa: Corroborate jailhouse informants

Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa filed an excellent innocence-related bill this week in the Texas Legislature, SB 1681, which would require corroboration to obtain a conviction based on testimony from a jailhouse informant.Currently (besides accomplices), only informants involved in undercover drug stings must have their testimony corroborated - legislation Hinojosa also carried back in 2001 (then on the House side) in the wake of the Tulia episode and the Dallas "fake drug" scandals.Jailhouse informants are more common in the most serious cases. A report released in 2004 (pdf) by the Northwestern University School of Law Center on Wrongful Convictions found that, of 111 death-row exonerations since capital punishment was resumed in the 1970s, 51 of the convictions were based at least in part on informants' testimony...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on March 13, 2009 (boomark / email).