notable
Baker: Not sure if This is the right track Preliminary dig. I have many more links but again not sure and don’t want to slide. Not a lawfag.
Signs that Jussie smottet turned confidential informant?
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2010/jun/15/secret-justice-criminal-informants-and-americas-underground-legal-system/
Sentencing (catch and release)
The main reward for being an informant is the ability to avoid criminal charges or to get a shorter sentence. The U.S. Sentencing Guidelines have a famous provision called § 5K1.1 which governs sentencing departures for cooperation, i.e., a court’s decision to give a defendant a sentence that is lower than the Guidelines would otherwise require because he or she provided “substantial assistance” to the government. Separate and apart from the Guidelines, federal drug law also imposes mandatory minimum sentences which are infamously long—sometimes decades for a first offense. 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e) permits a court to sentence a defendant below these statutory mandatory minimums if the government files a mo-tion stating that the defendant has provided “substantial assistance.” Because courts lack authority to impose shorter sen-tences without a substantial assistance motion, cooperation has become one of the only ways that drug defendants can avoid decades or even life in prison.
Investigations using confidential informants can bypass subpoenas, warrants Miranda rights.
Another area of law governs how informants can be used to investigate others. The Supreme Court has given the government nearly unfettered authority to use informants in investigations by exempting informant use from many of the constraints of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
Informants are therefore an ex-tremely powerful tool: they permit the government to seek out and even record private information without concrete evi-dence of wrongdoing or a warrant, and without asking a judge.
Miranda rights do not apply to targets if a confidential informant:
“For example, a jailhouse snitch working for the government can question a suspect without triggering Miranda, even though if police asked those questions directly the suspect would have to be Mirandized. This rule applies only if the suspect has not yet been charged with a crime.
Confidential informants do not need to be disclosed to defense unless they have been found guilty of a crime:
Government must disclose to the defense negative information about their confidential informant only of confidential informant is found guilty of a crime:
“These constitutional disclosure rules, however, only apply to defendants who go to trial. In United States v. Ruiz, 536 U.S. 622 (2002), the Court decided that defendants who plead guilty are not entitled to Giglio impeachment material.”