California paid gang enforcers $339,000 to extract jailhouse confessions

Southern California authorities freed two Mexican Mafia enforcers facing life sentences and paid them over $339,000 to elicit confessions from uncharged murder suspects. The ACLU has filed suit over the programme.

Two Mexican Mafia veterans paid to run covert confession operation across six California counties

Southern California authorities released two enforcers for a violent state prison gang who were facing life sentences and paid them more than $339,000 to work as professional jailhouse informants, injusticewatch.org has reported. Their assignment was to draw out confessions from uncharged suspects in difficult-to-solve murder cases, primarily those involving street gangs. Payment was made regardless of whether a confession was obtained.

The two former Mexican Mafia enforcers — Raymond Cuevas and Jose Paredes — proved productive enough that police agencies in six California counties deployed them in an estimated 300 undercover jail operations over six years, beginning in late 2010 or early 2011, according to court records.

Suspects eager to impress

Confessions were at times straightforward to extract. Some young gang members were so eager to impress Mexican Mafia veterans with accounts of their toughness that they overstated their involvement in killings, claiming sole responsibility for murders that evidence showed had been carried out by a group. "I beat that fool to death," one street gang member boasted in a recorded conversation, according to a transcript. "I burned that fool." When the informant pressed him — "Why did you kill the fool, fool?" — the suspect confirmed the killing had been motivated by gang rivalry, and the case was effectively resolved.

Death threats used to provoke responses

When confessions were not forthcoming, court records show the informants resorted to death threats in several cases. They told suspects they were on "green light" lists — inmates that Mexican Mafia leaders had ordered killed for allegedly breaking the organisation's rules. The informants told suspects that confessing to the murder in question, while denying the rule violation, could lead to their names being removed from those lists.

Despite a longstanding United States Supreme Court ruling that bars confessions obtained under such duress as inherently unreliable, the informants used these threats with what court records indicate was the apparent approval of police and the acquiescence of prosecutors. In at least some cases, defence attorneys raised no objection. In the best-documented case, the defendant accepted a plea bargain rather than challenge the admissibility of his confession.

Cuevas and Paredes, who initially worked in exchange for leniency in their own cases and relatively comfortable jail conditions, were accustomed to earning fees as high as $3,000 per operation.

Legislative attempt blocked

Civil liberties groups and the California criminal defence bar have faced sustained resistance in efforts to curb such practices. The ACLU and the Northern California Innocence Project sponsored legislation seeking to limit the financial incentive for becoming a professional informant by capping pay at $100 per case.

Prosecutors' groups successfully blocked the bill, arguing it would unwisely restrict what they characterised as a useful investigative tool for penetrating violent criminal subcultures such as those affiliated with the Mexican Mafia. They also contended that additional disclosure requirements in the bill would endanger future informants by revealing too much identifying information.

ACLU turns to the courts

With the legislative route exhausted, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against the Orange County sheriff and the Orange County district attorney. The suit, filed last month, contends that officials ran an illegal informant programme for years and withheld material details from defendants and courts.

The lawsuit addresses the "green light" threats directly: "The threats these informants made and continue to make are plain, they are explicit, and they are unconstitutional." It further states that officials were aware of the threats yet withheld that information from the courts.

Some defendants who allegedly confessed to Cuevas and Paredes never learned the informants' names. Even in cases where the pair testified, they were at times identified only as Confidential Informants 1 and 2. Both men are today believed to be in a witness protection programme. They could not be reached for comment, and the FBI handler they identified during their last court appearance in late 2016 did not respond to requests for assistance in contacting them.

Injustice Watch drew primarily on court records, supplemented by accounts from other Mexican Mafia defectors, in documenting how authorities in several instances compromised civil liberties in pursuit of murder convictions.

Who is Raymond Cuevas?

Asked during one court appearance whether he enjoyed violence, Cuevas replied: "Who doesn't?" A street gang member since the age of nine, Cuevas had the name of the Hollywood-area gang in which he was raised — the Rebels — tattooed across the back of his head and on his stomach. He also bore the tattooed abbreviation "R13" on one leg and one hand. The "13" signals, to anyone familiar with Southern California Latino gang culture, that he and the Rebels were affiliated with the Mexican Mafia — known in Spanish as "La Eme," meaning the letter M, the thirteenth in the alphabet.

La Eme functions as a protection structure for Southern California Latino street gang members incarcerated in the state's prisons and jails. The organisation shields them from rival prison gangs representing other regions and ethnicities. Even members of gangs that are violent rivals on the streets are expected to set aside those conflicts and unify under the "13" affiliation once incarcerated. They are also expected to pay for that protection. Affiliated street gangs pay taxes on profits from criminal activities including drug dealing and extortion. Persistent non-payment can result in physical attacks or death.

Cuevas worked as a tax collector for the organisation before authorities approached him with a different proposition.

Source: Times of Malta