A cesspool of Judicial Corruption

THIRTY-EIGHT the rewards of "testilying"

It's hard to tell how long it'll take the Supreme Court to take David's case. But the issue is now of major magnitude because the Ninth Circuit has changed the standard, and it will reflect on future decisions in other cases.

One informant lies with impunity. One judge, appointed politically, with the power to destroy anyone who comes into his/her courtroom where no reasonable way to appeal the decision, can only lead to tyranny. By allowing a rule that a trial judge's discernment is final is fatal to justice.

In David's case, we watched a process unfold that makes the term "kangaroo court" seem mild and innocuous. With millions of dollars spent by David and his family and by the taxpayers, with loss of WaterOz's potential income and shattered family members' lives, how can we feel that there is justice in this Land of our heritage?

About the time the "parade" against David was in its infancy Former Ohio Congressman Robert E. Bauman, JD, wrote an article called "Personal Privacy, The United States: An Informer's Paradise" (December 1997).

He stated: "Most Americans know little or nothing about the widespread domestic use of police informants, and few government and police officials are willing to talk openly about this big, dirty secret. It could be you being investigated or charged with crimes you didn't commit because an informant pointed the finger at you."

The Congressman explained: "Money laundering is one of the favorite charges pursued. Shrouded in secrecy, informers don't want publicity about their nasty work. They want lenient treatment for past crimes, money rewards and sometimes revenge. Despite constant government efforts to keep the public in the dark, the bright sunlight of publicity has exposed the squirming mass under the rock."

Further, Congressman Bauman gives details:

In the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, President Clinton quickly demanded that Congress pass legislation greatly increasing police wiretapping, FBI surveillance and the expanded use and protection of government informants." He said that many of Clinton's dubious proposals found their way into law under the guise of "anti-terrorism" controls.

He revealed that even 15 years ago "Michael Levine, a retired 25-year veteran of both U.S. Customs and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), estimates there are currently at least 15,000 informers on federal payrolls, not counting many thousands more paid by state and local police. His estimate does not include more than 10,000 informants who claim money rewards each year for reporting fellow taxpayers to the IRS, "or the nearly 1,000 so-called controlled informants" the IRS pays to inform on others, some of them tax accountants. For example, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1996, the IRS paid informants US$3.5 million–nearly double what it paid for the previous year." How much is that in today's value?

Levine (retired in 1990) complained that informants earn three or four times more money than their bosses. He said, "Our rights as citizens and the U.S. Constitution are now in the hands of 15,000 wild, out-of-control informants."
Former Congressman Henry J. Hyde of the House Judiciary Committee talked about government use of "an army of well paid secret informers" whom he described as "a motley crew of drug pushers, ex-cons, convicts, prisoners and other social misfits. . . . They have a strong incentive to lie, and they often do. Informants, by their very nature, are not normal, gainfully employed, honest, upright citizens. Rather they are, or have been, involved in drug or other serious criminal activity, and their motivation is to save their own skins."

Congressman Bauman gives some examples of how the system works:

Typical is the 1996 New York federal district court case in which Emad A. Salem, the unsavory main government witness in New York's World Trade Center terrorist bombing conspiracy trial, admitted he lied, testifying he was promised more than $1 million by the government for his assistance as the principal informer in the case....

Informers are sometimes paid on a contingency fee; the total value of property they finger for successful forfeiture determines how much money the government pays into their personal bank accounts . . . cooperating witnesses receive 25 percent of the value of property seized by the government in any one case, with a maximum cap of $250,000.00.

A report of the U.S. House Committee on Government Operations showed how well informers are being paid: Even back in 1990-91, for example, the Justice Department paid 65 informants more than $100,000 each, 24 were paid between $100,000 and $250,000, and eight got over $250,000 each. With the declining value of the dollar, you can estimate how much money that is in today's economy. But be aware–secrecy is the rule!

Bauman shares other insights about how they are polluting our system:

Although the Sixth Amendment, part of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, guarantees an accused person the right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him," courts have held this is not absolute and usually applies at trial but not always in preliminary stages of investigation and indictment.

These rulings Bauman says, "supporting the so-called informant's privilege," allow secret accusers to avoid risk of exposure by having to testify in public. Instead, a police officer seeking a search warrant simply repeats before a magistrate, or testifies before a grand jury about what he was told by "a reliable informant." The highly unfair result: most criminal defendants never find out who accused them of wrong doing, unless prosecutors decide an informant's testimony at trial is essential to convict.

Prosecutors, police and federal agents defend this system, arguing informants are indispensable in organized crime, terrorism and white-collar crime cases.
Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote in his book, The Best Defense, about little-known rules that govern the justice game in America today. "Rule IV is–Almost all police lie about whether they violated the Constitution in order to convict "guilty defendants."

"That is certainly accurate," Bauman said, "when it comes to the use and/or manufacture of police informers. It is now commonplace for police lacking a "reliable informant" on which to base a request for a search or arrest warrant, to invent them."

"Lying by police to support questionable criminal charges against suspects has gone on for years in New York City," according to a report of the Mayor's commission investigating police corruption. After 1993-94 hearings the Mollen Commission concluded: "New York police routinely made false arrests, invented informers, tampered with evidence and committed perjury on the witness stand. "Perjury is the most widespread form of police wrongdoing," the report stated–noting it even has a well-known nickname among the court house cognoscenti–"testilying."

Mr. Bauman sums up his Article with thought provoking observations. He wrote:

Congressman Hyde believes, "Most Americans don't realize the extent to which our Constitutional protections have been violated and diminished in recent years."

Neutral observers, libertarians like the Cato Institute, political conservatives like Hyde and Judge Trott, have joined with liberals and others on the left like Professor Dershowitz and Philip S. Gutis, media relations director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

They believe unchecked police informant use constitutes a serious danger to individual liberty. While the public only learns about major informant cases that go wrong, there are thousands of accused persons fingered by a "friend" for a crime they did not commit.

Carefully controlled use of informants has a place in proper law enforcement, but what kind of justice is it when prosecutors boast of charges against a businessman whose employee or associate settles a score with an anonymous accusation of criminal conduct?

Betrayal is an essential element in the government police-informant game, but the repeated betrayal of basic Constitutional principles guaranteeing our freedom is the real menace to society. . . .

Late Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis warned:

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. U.S. government agents may boast of cleverly turning criminals into instruments of law enforcement, but in this crude process, law officers have become willing co-conspirators in crime and too often, criminals themselves.

What if prosecutors, judges and government agents get bonuses for arrests and convictions. Would these people be chasing dollars rather than serving justice?