If there are indeed 154 million blogs, then there isn’t any point in trying to look at each. Simply accepting that there is a blog for every issue is imaginable. One that is however occasionally interesting to occasionally look at is the Snitching Blog. It can be found at:

http://www.snitching.org/

Most courts instruct juries that there must be corroboration of an accomplice’s testimony but what if the witness is not an accomplish but a jailhouse informant? Should judges instruct on how to evaluate that kind of testimony? 

Governor Brown recently  signed  legislation requiring corroboration before a jailhouse informant can testify. SF Chronicle story here: Law requires corroboration of cellmate’s testimony. California joins Texas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Idaho, and several other states that require safeguards to counteract the well-documented unreliability of jailhouse snitch testimony. Here is part of the bill:

A jury or judge may not convict a defendant, find a special circumstance true, or use a fact in aggravation based on the uncorroborated testimony of an in-custody informant.

An “in custody informant” is defined as: “a person, other than a codefendant, percipient witness, accomplice, or coconspirator, whose testimony is based on statements allegedly made by the defendant while both the defendant and the informant were held in within a city or county jail, state penal institution, or correctional institution.”