A California Supreme Court case involving a Los Angeles County man has helped expose a secretive law enforcement practice that critics say allows police to sidestep constitutional protections against self-incrimination — and reporters had to fight for months just to get basic answers about how it works.
The case centers on David Allen, who was arrested on suspicion of murder in 2016 at age 28. After his arrest, Allen invoked his right to remain silent four separate times. Despite that, investigators turned to a tactic known as a “Perkins operation,” in which a police officer or a civilian informant poses as a fellow inmate to draw out incriminating statements from a suspect who believes he’s simply talking to another person behind bars.
According to court records, statements Allen made during that operation became “the centerpiece of the prosecution’s case” against him. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to 45 years to life in prison. He has since petitioned the California Supreme Court, arguing that the tactic violated his Fifth Amendment rights and his federal due process protections, and is seeking to have his conviction overturned.
The case caught the attention of CalMatters criminal justice reporter Cayla Mihalovich last fall, after a tip led her to dig deeper into Allen’s petition. What she found was striking: the state’s highest court has been accepting a growing number of similar cases, all involving defendants who say undercover operatives coerced them into incriminating themselves after they had already invoked their Miranda rights, or convinced them to waive those rights altogether before formal interrogation. At least nine more Perkins-related cases have been accepted by the court since Allen’s.
That discovery prompted a much broader investigation. Mihalovich and her editors set out to answer a series of fundamental questions that, it turned out, law enforcement agencies were reluctant to address: How exactly do these operations work? How do they manage to operate around Miranda protections? What do they cost taxpayers? How are the undercover operatives — often incarcerated people themselves — recruited and trained? And who, demographically, tends to be targeted?
Getting those answers proved far more difficult than expected. Despite reviewing thousands of pages of court documents, reporters found that law enforcement agencies and district attorneys’ offices treat details of these operations as closely guarded secrets.
CalMatters filed nearly two dozen public records requests with law enforcement agencies across Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, Orange and Santa Clara counties. Nearly all of them were denied. After consulting with the First Amendment Coalition, CalMatters brought in attorneys from the law firm Covington & Burling to push back against the denials and advocate for greater transparency. That effort, spanning several months, eventually produced a handful of previously unreleased law enforcement records. The attorneys are continuing to pursue additional documents even as this story goes to print.
The result is what CalMatters describes as the most thorough examination to date of Perkins operations in California. Mihalovich reviewed more than 5,000 pages of court records and conducted over 40 interviews with legal scholars, public defenders, prosecutors, district attorneys, state lawmakers, criminal justice advocates and people who have been incarcerated.
“It’s psychological war,” San Diego criminal defense attorney Michelle Luna Reynoso told CalMatters. “How is this not considered cruel and unusual punishment?”
Readers with information about Perkins operations in their own communities are encouraged to contact reporter Cayla Mihalovich at [email protected].
This reporting project was supported by a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights, in partnership with Arnold Ventures.
Original source: CalMatters
