Legal Commentary

When Is a Snitch Believable?

By TChris

When a snitch accuses someone of a crime in order to reduce a sentence that he anticipates or is already serving, there's good reason to doubt the snitch's credibility. Law enforcement agents and prosecutors nonetheless have few qualms about building cases around the testimony of a snitch -- unless the snitch points the finger of blame in the wrong direction, like Raymond Garrett did.

Garrett, who founded the Brick Money Entertainment record company, made a deal with federal prosecutors. He pled guilty to a drug trafficking charge. In exchange for his agreement to cooperate against other wrongdoers, prosecutors agreed to recommend that he receive a 10 year sentence. So far, everybody's happy.

But then "Garrett told investigators that two Utica police officers were involved in criminal activity." If he had made similar allegations against anyone else, they may have been taken at face value, as they so often are. Police and prosecutors were less willing to believe him after he accused the police. [more ...]

An internal investigation at the Utica Police Department has since exonerated the unnamed officers of any wrongdoing, officials said. Still, Garrett’s allegations remain tucked away within sealed court documents.

The nature of the accusations and the identities of the accused officers remains a secret. The accusations may have been entirely bogus, although it's not clear what Garrett would gain by inventing a story that the government would not be predisposed to believe. Ratting out a competing drug dealer or anyone else he knew would have been a smarter move.

The local district attorney says other suspects have "accused local police officers of playing a role in drug-trafficking or gun-selling operations" but that none of those accusations have ever been proved to be true. Maybe that's because the police don't rely just on the word of a snitch when they investigate a police officer, as they often do when investigating other suspects.

Utica Public Safety Commissioner Daniel LaBella has a theory about why Garrett might have falsely accused the police:

“A lot of times people make allegations against police officers to defer attention away from their own criminal matters,” LaBella said.

A lot of times people make allegations against all sorts of other people to deflect attention from their own crimes. That's why accusations made by criminals should rarely be credited, even though they're the driving force behind a large share of federal drug prosecutions.

The larger point is that snitches always have an incentive to fabricate. Even when they accurately identify another criminal, they often make that offender seem worse than he is ("yeah, man, he moves 20 keys a week for sure") with the expectation that they'll get more brownie points for frying a big fish than they will for a small one.

As for Garrett, federal prosecutors didn't like the fact that he accused the cops of mischief, and have moved to revoke his plea deal. Garrett in turn has moved to withdraw his guilty plea. His sentencing has been postponed until the mess gets straightened out.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on July 16, 2008 (boomark / email).