A Snitch’s Story
Leslie Vernon White, who has provided testimony in as many as 40 cases, described the process by which inmate informers fabricate evidence. White received widespread attention after an appearance on 60 Minutes (and coverage in other national news sources) in which he claimed that he often lied when giving testimony as a jailhouse snitch. In a 1988 interview with Time Magazine, White, a self-confessed career criminal, had this to say about his prison stints: “Every time I come in here, I inform and get back out.”
Even in the late 1970s, individuals in the Los Angeles district attorney’s office regarded White as undesirable and unreliable. After perjuring himself in a 1981 trial, and falsely claiming that the Hillside Strangler had confessed to him in 1982, White lost any remaining shards of credibility. Nevertheless, prosecutors continued to use his testimony, and in November of 1988, the Los Angeles Times reported that White had been called as a witness in three murder cases.
In his 1990 interview with 60 Minutes, White gave a first hand account of how he was able to render perjured testimony believable. First, White determined the last name of a person recently charged with a murder in Los Angeles County (information available in the public record). Then, using the prison chaplain’s phone, he called the Document Control Center of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office to find the case number assigned to the accused, as well as the arrest date. Next, he would place a call to the District Attorney’s Record’s Bureau, and, posing as a Deputy District Attorney, he attained the names of the prosecutors assigned to the case as well as the names of the prosecution’s key witnesses. Then, identifying himself as a Los Angeles police officer, he called the County Coroner’s Office, from whom he learned the manner in which the murder victim was killed. Finally, White would call the families of the victim and of the accused to learn characteristics personal to each. Armed with this information, White would fabricate a seemingly credible “confession” on the part of the accused.
Though White was exceptionally crafty in his pursuit of details, he claimed to Los Angeles Times reporters that his methods were both known to and employed by many others looking for early release from California’s prisons.
On November 17, 1988, the Los Angeles district attorney issued a special directive for the review of every major conviction that involved jailhouse snitch testimony. The initial review turned up 120 questionable cases. By 1989, defense lawyers had compiled the names of 225 individuals in Los Angeles County who had been convicted of murder or other felonies in cases where prosecutors used jailhouse informers as witnesses.[7] On March 3, 1992, the Attorney General of California indicted and arrested White for past perjury.
