California bill would limit cash cops can pay jailhouse snitches

March 22, 2017

Following revelations that a pair of Mexican Mafia members made hundreds of thousands of dollars working as jailhouse snitches, a California bill that would restrict payments to informants is making its way through the state Legislature. [LA Daily News]

Assembly Bill 359 calls for capping monetary and nonmonetary payments to informants at $100 per case. Currently, there is a $50 per case limit for testimony and no compensation limit for investigative work.

Critics say the current payment system allows some informants to live like kings behind bars and provides snitches incentives to lie.

The bill was inspired, in part, by Mexican Mafia members Raymond “Puppet” Cuevas and Jose “Bouncer” Paredes. Cuevas and Paredes were paid $335,000 over a four-year period as jailhouse snitches who worked dozens of cases in Southern California.

Cuevas and Paredes received as much as $3,000 a case, as well as cartons of Marlboro cigarettes, fast food, Xbox machines and other perks. Likewise, they received leniency on charges that could have kept them in prison for life.

Court ledgers show that, between 2011 and 2015, police in Orange County paid the men $14,200, Riverside County paid them $6,000 and law enforcement in San Bernardino County paid them $3,750. The remainder of the informant pay came from law enforcement agencies in Long Beach and Los Angeles County.

Authorities typically sent the men into jails to befriend suspects, usually other members of the Mexican Mafia who had yet to obtain legal representation. In cells wired with recording devices, Cuevas and Paredes offered to help the suspects avoid a death penalty from the Mexican Mafia, but only if they confessed a complete history of their alleged crimes.

Records show Cuevas and Paredes were also among the informants whom, at times, law enforcement tasked with getting information from suspects who already had lawyers, a practice that violates federal law. The practice of police using informants to get information from suspects who already had lawyers was a key component of a recent jailhouse snitch scandal in Orange County.

Orange County prosecutors faced allegations that they routinely misused jailhouse informants and withheld information from judges and defense attorneys on payments and promises of leniency to snitches. In turn, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office was booted from the prosecutorial role in a mass shooting case, and some murder convictions were overturned. Also, there are ongoing state and federal investigations in the case.

The Orange County snitch scandal likewise served as inspiration for AB 359.

“The integrity of our criminal justice system is crumbling, and one contributing factor is California’s long history of unethical and illegal use of jailhouse informants, like we are seeing play out in Orange County,” said Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles), one of the sponsors of the bill.

In addition to limiting payments to informants, AB 359 would also require prosecutors to keep databases tracking informant work and locations and to turn detailed informant histories over to defense attorneys no later than 30 days before preliminary hearings.

On Tuesday, the bill unanimously passed the Assembly Public Safety Committee. The bill heads next to the Assembly floor.