Kansas Senate, don’t let jailhouse informants steal innocent lives like Pete Coones’

The use of jailhouse informants is a highly unreliable and secretive feature of the criminal justice system — in Kansas and across the United States. Everyone is denied justice when someone is wrongfully convicted based on unreliable jailhouse witness testimony as we saw firsthand in the case of Kansan Pete Coones. When innocent people like Pete are convicted, it causes irrecoverable harm to the wrongfully accused and their family — but it also hurts the victims of the crime, who thought they had closure only to learn that the wrong person was held responsible. The only people who benefit from the current system are dishonest jailhouse snitches, who are offered and receive benefits to contribute to this injustice through misleading and false testimony.

Jailhouse witnesses are willing to testify for the prosecution – usually about hearing other inmates confess to crimes – for a price. Prosecutors turn to jailhouse informants when their case is otherwise weak and they believe they need the informant’s testimony to secure a conviction. It is no surprise such testimony is unreliable: it is bought. Without proper protections in place, the use of jailhouse informants will continue to cause miscarriages of justice.

That is why it was so important last year when the Kansas House of Representatives took a big step toward preventing wrongful convictions and improving efficiency in the justice system by passing House Bill 2366 by a unanimous vote of 123-0. This legislation would prevent wrongful convictions involving jailhouse witnesses by requiring prompt disclosures of specific jailhouse witness evidence — including cooperation deals, their criminal history and other cases in which they have testified for benefits — as well as tracking jailhouse witness testimony, pre-trial admissibility hearings and jury instructions on the specific factors to consider when evaluating the reliability of such testimony. Other states have already adopted similarly strong measures. Kansas should be next, and the state Senate can build on the momentum from the House to get it done.

To bolster its weak case and lack of evidence, the prosecution at Pete’s trial used testimony from a jailhouse witness who claimed Pete confessed when they shared a cell in the Butler County jail for two days. Despite warnings that the witness was unreliable, the prosecutors offered him a deal to testify, and threatened him with jail time when he refused. None of this information regarding his motivation or credibility was disclosed because the prosecution unconstitutionally withheld it. While judges understand how the incentivized informant system works, social science research tells us that many jurors wrongly assume that prosecutors have special knowledge that an incentivized jailhouse informant is telling the truth, leading them to believe informant testimony.

While this legislation passed the Kansas House unanimously with bipartisan support, the bill unfortunately never made it before the Senate and, in fact, it is still tied up in the Senate Judiciary Committee waiting to be heard. When the Kansas Senate reconvenes on Jan. 10, its first matter of business should be giving this bill a hearing. Their second matter of business should be bringing it to the floor for a vote.

Kansas can learn from what happened to Pete and pass legislation to protect other innocent Kansans going forward. That is what Pete wanted.

Pete Coones was my client. And 108 days after his exoneration, he passed away — having lost not just years, but ultimately his life to his wrongful conviction because the system that wrongfully incarcerated him also failed to provide adequate healthcare. Pete dedicated his unfairly short time as a free man advocating for the innocent and wrongfully convicted. HB 2366 would facilitate the implementation of justice for all in Kansas. We owe it to Pete Coones and his family to pass this legislation in his memory and to protect future generations from such injustices.