Confidential Informant Definition

The use of confidential informants is pretty common in drug cases.

Confidential Informant Case Law

The confidential informant case law says due process requires and demands that these contracts be enforced against the government.

The principle for enforcing cooperation agreements arises under the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment. State v. Wacker, 688 N.W.2d 357, 362 (Neb. 2004); People v. Manning, 672 P. 2d 499, 504 (Colo. 1983). “Generally, fundamental fairness requires that promises made during plea-bargaining and analogous contexts be respected.” Wacker, 688 N.W.2d at 362.

Contract Principles Apply

Further, courts construe cooperation agreements under contract principles.

Cooperation agreements are construed strictly against the government and courts should not hesitate to scrutinize the government’s conduct to ensure it comports with the highest standard of fairness.

Confidential Informant Agreement

In addition, a confidential informant agreement does not need to be in writing, although courts prefer they be put down in writing is preferable.

However, whether the agreement is in writing or conveyed verbally, police officers have the power, by their words, to bind the prosecution to a resolution that is enforceable.

Finally, words employed with ambiguous meanings should be carefully considered but, in the end, should be construed against the government, especially when those words are relied upon to persuade a defendant to act in exchange for dismissal of pending charges.

Confidential Informants Are Recruited After An Arrest

What happens after a drug arrest?

A pretty common scenario after a drug arrest goes something like this:

* Defendant is brought into an interrogation room very soon after the arrest. No paperwork or processing has been done yet.* Cops have found something, and the accused knows it.* Eventually, after the defendant has conceded his involvement the topic of conversation switches to the options facing the defendant.* There are always two doors he is told he can walk through. This is where they start talking about what he can do to “help himself out.”

This is typically who most confidential informants are recruited and pressured to cooperate with police.

Confidential Informant Charges Dropped

Where the government enters into an agreement with a prospective defendant and he acts to his detriment in reliance on the agreement, as a matter of fair conduct, the government is required to honor such an agreement.

Often defendant’s have to make full confessions to their own crimes. In exchange, the state agrees that confidential informant charges are dropped or dismissed.

It would be unfair and a due process violation to allow the prosecution to exploit a confidential informant, have that person incriminate themselves, use that person for information then turn around and charge the informant with their own crimes.

Motion To Dismiss

Below are a two Illinois case where the state charged an informant with their own drug crimes even though the defendant had agreed to become a confidential informant for the police.

In each case the defendant had to file a motion to dismiss in order to enforce their agreement wit...