Presenting at the University of Dayton School of Law on Nov. 17 through the school's faculty colloquium series, Elon Law professor Michael L. Rich detailed why and how criminal law informants should be better protected.
Rich’s paper, titled “Of Brass Rings and Red-Headed Stepchildren: Protecting Active Criminal Informants,” suggests that current law does not protect criminal informants sufficiently and that society has a duty, arising from its general obligation to protect its vulnerable members, to protect these informants.
“Though society’s disdain for informants is understandable, the failure to protect them is unjustified,” writes Rich. “Society has a widely-accepted normative obligation to protect its vulnerable members, and informants are often quite vulnerable. Moreover, this duty is enhanced when an individual’s vulnerabilities are the result of her engagement in socially-beneficial activities, as they are in the case of the active criminal informant.”
Rich offers several policies to better protect active criminal informants, including: requiring court approval for the use of particularly vulnerable informants and prosecutorial consent for the use of all other informants; training for informants and law enforcement agents in minimizing the risk of harm to informants; and encouraging law enforcement to minimize these risks by including informants in the scope of existing workers’ compensation schemes.
Currently, Rich teaches courses in criminal law, evidence, and criminal procedure. His areas of research include criminal law, civil and criminal white-collar litigation, police investigatory methods, and government fraud. His publications include, Lessons of Disloyalty in the World of Criminal Informants, forthcoming American Criminal Law Review, 2012.