Offers a new understanding of jailhouse informants and the role they
play in wrongful convictions
Jailhouse informants--witnesses who testify in a criminal trial, often
in exchange for some incentive--are particularly persuasive to jurors. A
jailhouse informant usually claims to have heard the defendant confess
to a crime while they were incarcerated together. Research shows that
such testimony increases the likelihood of a guilty verdict. But it is
also a leading contributor to wrongful convictions. Informants, after
all, are generally criminals who are offering testimony in return for
some key motivator, such as a reduced sentence.
This book offers a broad overview of the history and legal and
psychological issues surrounding the testimony of jailhouse informants.
It provides groundbreaking psychological research to address how they
are used, the number of convictions that have ultimately been overturned
on other evidence, how such informants are perceived in the courtroom,
and by what means jurors might be informed about the risks of this type
of testimony. The volume provides a much-needed examination of legal
remedies to the impact of jailhouse informants and suggests best
practices in dealing with jailhouse informant testimony in court.
There is a critical need to understand the influence of jailhouse
informants and how their testimony can best be handled in court in the
interests of justice. Jailhouse Informants is the first work of its
kind that rises to the challenge of answering these difficult questions.
