ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 9, 1996 TAG: 9611110009
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: A deal with a killer
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
The story of Javier Cruz illustrates the ethical dilemmas that arise when law enforcement officers rely on criminals to help make their cases.
Informants help police infiltrate conspiracies they couldn't otherwise and penetrate deeper into criminal organizations. And most informants are in Cruz's position: criminals hoping to work off charges or get lighter sentences by giving police someone bigger. The more information a criminal has to trade and the more involved he is, the better the deal he can negotiate.
But trying to get Cruz's murder charge dropped "raises real questions of ethical impropriety," says the head of a national law-enforcement ethics center.
"Someone at the DEA must have made the judgment that his [informing] had more value to them than upholding the law," said Gary W. Sykes, executive director of the Southwestern Law Enforcement Institute in Dallas, where the Center for Law Enforcement Ethics trains police officers.
He said it's hard for undercover agents - who must lie and participate in criminal activity to do their job - to keep their ethical bearings. And on top of that, Sykes said, "There is enormous pressure on the DEA to demonstrate its success, given all the money it gets."
"To the extent we use dirty means to meet good ends, you always have to worry that those dirty means will corrupt those ends," he said.
Sykes said police sometimes overlook the crimes of informants on the "bigger fish theory" - that by ignoring the informant's crime, it will lead them to more serious criminals. But even under that theory - which he said is not universally accepted by law enforcement - "you have to balance the seriousness of the offense they committed versus the value to the public in other areas. Murder is the most serious criminal offense that we have."
John Kleinig, executive director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics in New York, said using informants is "a very tricky business" but is necessary to law enforcement.
"Informants, at least in the drug world, constitute the best way to get information," he said.
In Cruz's case, "it may be what was reached was a deal in which the charge more likely to stick [was agreed on] over one likely to lose. Maybe involuntary manslaughter might be the best they could hope for" had the case gone to trial.
"You've got to remember, many, many cases are settled by plea bargains," Kleinig said.
Joycelyn Pollock is a professor at Southwest Texas State University who has written a book on criminal justice ethics. She also trains officers in ethical decision-making on the job.
She said that every action should be looked at individually and that the ends don't justify the means.
Police could argue that using Cruz to go after a large number of drug traffickers served a greater good for society than locking him up on a murder charge, she said.
"And that's assuming drug convictions are more important than the conviction of a murderer, and that's questionable," Pollock said. "Is even 100 drug indictments equal to one murder?"
LENGTH: Medium: 62 linesby CNB