I was just watching a news story about a wrongfully convicted man who did 20 years because a jailhouse informant lied and said that he confessed to the crime while in jail. And it made me think, doesn’t the very concept of a jailhouse informant violate multiple laws?
First of all, isn’t it witness tampering to offer a witness something in exchange for testimony? I looked up several states’ witness tampering laws and it says just that. But prosecutors often offer people time off their sentence in exchange for damning testimony.
And isn’t hearsay inadmissible? Maybe I am misunderstanding what hearsay is, but I thought that conversations outside of court are not usable in court proceedings. So even if someone confesses a crime to me, I am not allowed to go to court and testify that they said this.
Finally, aren’t attorneys ethically bound to not let their witness testify if they know they are lying? Do prosecutors ever get disbarred or punished if it comes out they offered informants time off their sentence in exchange for false testimony? I know the legal system in our country is massively messed up and prosecutors have way too much power, so I doubt this is the case.
In: 34
Witness tampering generally refers to offering certain types of things in exchange for *false* testimony. Theoretically the prosecutors thought the informant was telling the truth. You may think the law says it’s illegal to offer a witness “something” but that’s not how the law works in practice. People get deals for testimony before conviction all the time.
Hearsay is generally second-hand knowledge or basically rumors. The witness seeing a confession first-hand is not hearsay, and the (potential) criminal confessing is not repeating rumors because they are the ones who would know for sure if they did it.
The informant can lie to attorneys and claim the testimony is true.
It may be unfair and inaccurate in many situations but it’s not illegal or many people would be successfully challenging it in court.
Latest Answers