Essay On Informant Testimony

Imagine being charged with a crime that you did not commit. Now imagine the primary evidence against you is the testimony of a person who was offered money or a lower sentence for testifying against you. In addition to that the jury that will decide your case is unaware that the person testifying was offered an incentive for his or her testimony. Imagine being convicted on this testimony alone. This is an example of informant testimony, where a person provides privileged information to law enforcement or in a courtroom, and as appalling as it is this is used often in the criminal justice system.
In 15% of wrongfully conviction cases overturned by DNA evidence, incentivized informant testimony played a factor in the initial wrongful conviction. …show more content…
First proposed reform is mandatory pretrial reliability hearings, where judges would assess the reliability of the witness. Illinois has put forth a potential blueprint for the factors that should be considered by the court in this case. These factors are as follows: The statement made, if any incentive that was receive by informant, criminal history of the informant, when and where the statement was made and who was present, whether the informant ever recanted their testimony and the circumstances of the recantation, other cases in which the informant testified and the circumstances of those cases and any other relevant information. The second proposed reform is that the defendant should be informed of the compensation agreement made, should have an opportunity to cross-examine the witness and the jury should be instructed to be highly critical of the information by a witness given an incentive. Other proposed reforms are placing a cap on the amount of compensation that can be given to an informant, registries of informants and backlisting of informants who commit perjury and monitoring of recurrent informants. Increasing consequences for perjury by prosecuting the crime more