Zapata, a slender 5-foot-9 Hawthorne native with no prior criminal history, said the two men sized him up immediately, noting the wristband jail staff use to display an inmate’s personal information. They bragged about stabbings and years spent in violent state prisons. As the hours dragged on, they pressed him about his charges, accused him of disrespecting them by staying quiet, and eventually threatened him with what’s known in Spanish prison slang as a “calentada” — a beating or a stabbing.

“Your life is in their hands,” Zapata told CalMatters in a recent interview. “Anything could happen to you in that type of environment. Not everybody makes it out.”

It wasn’t until months later that Zapata learned the truth: his cellmates were undercover law enforcement operatives, part of a so-called Perkins operation — a legal but increasingly controversial interrogation tactic in which officers or civilian informants pose as fellow inmates to draw out incriminating statements from suspects who haven’t yet been charged.

The technique, named for a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, is used widely across California and has become especially common in Riverside County, which now trains other law enforcement agencies statewide on how to run the operations. Prosecutors defend Perkins stings as a legitimate and often decisive investigative tool — one that can solve cold cases or, they say, even clear innocent suspects. But defense attorneys, legal scholars and civil rights groups argue the tactic is coercive, prone to producing false confessions and disproportionately used against Black and Latino defendants.

A CalMatters review of cases from Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and Santa Clara counties found undercover operatives sometimes paid as much as $3,000 a day, jail cells wired for covert recording, and staged scenarios involving fabricated DNA evidence, police lineups and surveillance footage — all designed to get suspects talking. In several instances, as many as five undercover agents were placed with a single target, often posing as older, physically imposing gang members with violent histories.

“It’s psychological war,” said Michelle Luna Reynoso, a San Diego criminal defense attorney. “How is this not considered cruel and unusual punishment?”

A CHILDHOOD IN HAWTHORNE, A LIFE UPENDED

Zapata grew up in a middle-class household in Hawthorne, the son of a Ford employee and a Verizon worker. He skateboarded around Venice Beach, listened to Metallica and Tupac, and enjoyed his mother’s cooking. At 15, he says, he was the victim of a violent shooting that had nothing to do with gangs — an incident that prompted his family to relocate to Temecula, where they settled into a two-story home with a pool. He went on to attend community college in San Diego, worked at a Mexican restaurant, and ran a small eBay electronics business.

Then, in 2015, everything changed. A 15-year-old acquaintance of a murder victim — herself in custody on unrelated charges and negotiating a deal — told investigators Zapata was involved in the killing. She later recanted, according to court records, but by then Zapata had already been placed in the cell with the two Perkins agents.

Zapata says he denied any involvement throughout the encounter, but fear got the better of him once the threats began. Though he insists he never outright confessed, prosecutors characterized his statements during the operation as an admission of guilt. A jury agreed, and in January 2024, Zapata was sentenced to 25 years to life for murder.

Earlier this year, California’s 4th District Court of Appeal reversed that conviction, ruling that investigators violated Zapata’s constitutional rights during the operation. He is now awaiting a new trial.

“It was heartbreaking to hear the verdict,” Zapata said. “It could happen to anybody.”

A LEGAL LOOPHOLE DECADES IN THE MAKING

Perkins operations occupy unusual legal terrain. Because they typically occur after arrest but before formal charges are filed, they fall into a gap between two constitutional protections: the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, which applies only after charges are filed, and Fifth Amendment Miranda protections, which normally require officers to stop questioning a suspect who asks for a lawyer.

In its 1990 decision Illinois v. Perkins, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that statements made to an undercover agent posing as a fellow inmate are considered voluntary — and therefore don’t require a Miranda warning — because the suspect doesn’t know he’s speaking with law enforcement. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that “Miranda forbids coercion, not mere strategic deception.”

Harvard Law School professor Alexandra Natapoff, a leading researcher on the use of informants, said the ruling effectively opened a backdoor around Miranda.

“Perkins operations are efforts by law enforcement to take advantage of the loophole to get confessions … without triggering a finding that the suspect is actually being interrogated,” she said, adding that the practice raises serious reliability concerns. “We know that people falsely confess to crimes they didn’t do because they feel like they need to posture or brag or protect themselves from their cellmates.”

Greg Totten, head of the California District Attorneys Association, said prosecutors don’t rely on Perkins statements in isolation.

“We look for corroboration, when we can find it, to make sure that the statements are intrinsically accurate and sound,” he said. “We have a responsibility not just to secure convictions but to protect the innocent from being prosecuted.”

INSIDE ZAPATA’S CELL

Court records show Zapata spent roughly three hours and 20 minutes in the cell with the two agents, monitored in real time by Riverside County Sheriff’s investigator James Dickey. When the agents failed to extract information within the first hour, Dickey pulled Zapata out, placed him in a police lineup, and falsely told him someone had identified him as the shooter — a tactic known as a “stimulation,” meant to prompt suspects to open up once returned to the cell.

When Dickey asked if Zapata wanted to talk, Zapata invoked his right to an attorney. Dickey told him he would be charged with murder anyway, then returned him to the cell without providing a lawyer. The two agents, who had overheard the exchange, immediately resumed questioning him.

“They wouldn’t stop questioning me,” Zapata testified at trial, adding that fear — not guilt — drove him to say what he did. “There was no doubt in my mind that I was in imminent danger.”

Dickey testified that the atmosphere in the cell was “upbeat” and that he observed no threats, though much of the recorded audio was difficult to make out. Riverside County Superior Court Judge John Davis, who allowed portions of the tape into evidence, called it “a very poor quality tape.”

A STATEWIDE PRACTICE, TRAINED IN RIVERSIDE

Riverside County ran its first Perkins operation in 2014, and its program — described by Dickey and Deputy District Attorney David Tahan as “a state model” during a 2024 training in Santa Rosa — now conducts multiple operations weekly, roughly half on behalf of outside agencies. More than half involve gang-related homicides, according to a training presentation obtained by CalMatters through a public records request.

Neither Dickey nor Tahan agreed to be interviewed for this story.

Los Angeles County, which pioneered many of the procedures Riverside later adopted, formalized its own Perkins protocols in 2017. Court filings tied to a pending California Supreme Court case show that in one unit alone, 85 of 400 murder convictions tied to Perkins operations in L.A. County involved suspects who had already invoked their Miranda rights — suggesting the true number across the county is likely far higher.

“These operations produce conviction after conviction,” said Scott Sanders, the Orange County defense attorney who exposed illegal use of jailhouse informants there more than a decade ago. “It’s a really rich zone for tons of misconduct.”

CASES PILING UP AT THE STATE SUPREME COURT

At least 10 Perkins-related challenges are now pending before the California Supreme Court, stemming from cases in San Diego, Riverside and Los Angeles counties. Defendants include four Hispanic, four Black and two white men — the youngest just 18 at the time of his interrogation.

One petitioner, Michael Goehner, alleges Perkins agents discouraged him from requesting an attorney and coached him to claim self-defense. Another, David Allen, says detectives ignored his repeated invocations of his right to remain silent, telling him he’d never see his daughter again unless he confessed. After Allen made incriminating statements, a prosecutor reportedly told detectives those statements couldn’t be used in court “unless Allen could be made to repeat the statement to an undercover police agent.” Days later, Allen was placed in a cell with what his attorney described as a “linebacker-sized” agent posing as a gang member.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office maintains that Perkins operations aren’t just useful for convictions — they’ve also helped exonerate the wrongly accused. The office says roughly a third of the 16 exonerations from its Justice Conviction Review Unit since 2015 stemmed from Perkins operations.

Jasmin Harris of the California Innocence Coalition pushed back on that framing.

“It’s quite a stretch — a step too far — for them to claim that this is a tool when, really, it’s just a tool for them to feel better about reversing a conviction after the petitioner has met the legal standard,” she said.

QUESTIONS OF RACIAL BIAS

The California Public Defenders Association and the ACLU have urged the state Supreme Court to examine racial disparities tied to the tactic. A Riverside County Public Defender’s Office analysis of 881 murder cases between 2015 and 2023 found Black defendants were more than four times as likely as white defendants to be targeted in a Perkins operation, while Latino defendants faced more than double the rate.

Gang expert Martín Flores, who has testified in more than 100 Perkins-related cases across Southern California, said undercover agents typically present themselves as seasoned, influential figures within jail culture. “It’s someone who, in perception, can make your life miserable or harmful in the county jail,” he said. “If you look weak and vulnerable, you’re going to become the prey.”

In San Diego, public defenders reviewing roughly 40 Perkins cases found agents routinely used racial slurs and stereotypes to build false rapport with suspects. That evidence became central to the case of Adrian Rodriquez, an 18-year-old Hispanic man transferred from juvenile detention to an adult jail cell in 2023, where he encountered two agents posing as gang members — one of whom claimed to have stabbed a cellmate 70 times.

In October, Rodriquez became the first person in California to file a Racial Justice Act petition challenging a Perkins operation, alleging an agent used racially charged language — including the n-word nearly 70 times — to manipulate him. A San Diego Superior Court judge ruled last month that Rodriquez’s claims warrant a full evidentiary hearing.

San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan defended the practice, saying it is applied consistently “no matter what the race, what the gender, what the orientation, what the cultural background.” She added that when done correctly, Perkins operations remain one of the most effective tools for uncovering the truth. “Like every tool that is available to pursue justice, it can be misused,” she said. “It’s not a reflection on the investigative tool being used, it’s a reflection on the people using it.”

ZAPATA WAITS FOR A SECOND CHANCE

For Zapata, the appellate court’s ruling brought a moment of disbelief. He recalled pacing his cell as he read the decision, which found that continuing the Perkins operation after he invoked his right to counsel amounted to an unlawful custodial interrogation.

The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office asked the California Supreme Court to overturn that ruling, arguing it conflicted with established law. The high court rejected that request on May 13, clearing the way for Zapata to be transferred back to a Riverside County jail to await a new trial.

Zapata said he’s trying to remain hopeful, even as he braces to face a system he believes failed him once already.

“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get a fair trial when I go back,” he said. “I’m fighting for my life at this point. I know I’m innocent so the truth shall set me free. Hopefully, I’ll be able to be home soon.”

Original source: CalMatters

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