Last week, the state Legislature approved a bill that would bar law enforcement agencies from using so-called Perkins operations against certain defendants under age 26 who were minors at the time of their alleged offense. The tactic involves undercover officers posing as fellow inmates to draw confessions or incriminating statements out of people in custody, without ever reading them their Miranda rights.

Assembly Bill 1905, introduced by Assemblymember Nick Schultz, a Burbank Democrat and former prosecutor, would prohibit these operations for people who allegedly committed crimes at 17 or younger, with an exception for cases where investigators believe someone’s safety is at immediate risk. The bill now awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature; he has until Sept. 30 to act.

The push for change follows a CalMatters investigation published in July that examined how widely Perkins operations are used throughout California, including in Riverside County. Court records reviewed as part of that reporting showed undercover operatives — sometimes paid as much as $3,000 a day — using elaborate ruses, hidden recording equipment in jail cells, and false claims of gang credentials to pressure suspects into talking. In some instances, as many as five undercover agents were placed in a cell with a single detainee.

Those agents were often described in legal filings as considerably older and more physically imposing than the people they were sent to question.

“I believe that Perkins agents are proven to be problematic,” Schultz said. “At the end of the day, we’re not trying to impede the ability of law enforcement to do their job. But nonetheless, we have to ensure that we are not having coerced statements admitted as evidence and securing convictions that may not be supported by the evidence.”

Supporters of the bill argue that young people in custody are especially susceptible to being manipulated into false or unreliable statements. California has moved incrementally over the past decade to shield minors from deceptive interrogation practices. In 2017, the state required that children under 16 consult with an attorney before waiving their Miranda rights. That protection was extended to 17-year-olds in 2020, and in 2022, lawmakers banned police from using deceptive tactics on anyone under 18 during formal interrogations.

Perkins operations, however, have remained largely outside those restrictions because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that undercover jailhouse conversations don’t legally count as custodial interrogations. Defense attorneys say that loophole has allowed some agencies to push well past ethical and constitutional boundaries.

“The Perkins agents are much more than passive listeners. In many cases, at least to me, they cross a constitutional line,” said Jessica Melikian, a public defender who has represented clients targeted by these operations. She said she has seen cases in which undercover agents urged young defendants to waive their rights, warned them that requesting a lawyer would backfire, or told them they would be harmed or killed in prison unless they confessed.

“These Perkins agents are doing things that law enforcement would never be allowed to do in a custodial interrogation,” Melikian said, adding that AB 1905 would help close that legal gap by formally classifying the operations as a form of deception under state law.

Not everyone supports the change. The California State Sheriffs’ Association and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office both opposed the bill, arguing it strips investigators of an important tool. The measure passed largely along party lines, with most Democrats in favor and Republicans, along with two Democratic senators, voting against it.

“The first concern is the limitation,” said Cory Salzillo, legislative director for the California State Sheriffs’ Association. “The second concern is this notion that it’s for ‘young people’ as the bill’s materials address, when — in fact — it is not limited to minors or persons under the age of 18.”

Salzillo said cases involving suspects under 18 in Perkins operations are uncommon and insisted existing law already offers minors adequate protection from psychological pressure and deception.

The debate carries particular weight in the Inland Empire. In February, the 4th District Court of Appeal overturned the conviction of a Riverside County man who has long maintained his innocence, ruling that investigators violated his rights during a Perkins operation. That case is among roughly ten now pending before the California Supreme Court involving defendants — four Hispanic, four Black and two white — who argue they were manipulated or coerced by undercover agents while in custody. The youngest was just 18 at the time.

“These cases are going to the Supreme Court because it’s an issue that is paramount to understanding how far law enforcement can go in these operations,” said Scott Sanders, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney. “These are the lines that you would think are too far.”

Even some prosecutors acknowledge the tactic needs boundaries. El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, who defends the value of Perkins operations for his own office, warned that law enforcement agencies risk losing control of the issue if they don’t set their own limits.

“If law enforcement does not put appropriate limits and guardrails on this type of a powerful tool, then the Legislature and the courts will do it for us,” Pierson said. “And their restrictions will probably be far more than what we think is reasonable.”

With the bill now before Newsom, its fate could shape how far California police can go in extracting confessions from young suspects — and whether cases built on those tactics, including ones from right here in Riverside County, will withstand judicial scrutiny in the months ahead.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Lawmakers Weigh New Limits on Undercover Police Stings Involving Minors appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The practice, named after a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, has helped prosecutors close hundreds of murder cases across the state. But defense attorneys, civil rights groups and a growing number of appellate judges argue the tactic has been stretched well beyond its original intent — particularly in cases where suspects had already invoked their right to remain silent.

A months-long investigation by CalMatters, drawing on more than 5,000 pages of court records and over 40 interviews with attorneys, scholars, lawmakers and people who were subject to the operations, offers the most detailed public accounting yet of how these stings work and who they target. Here’s what the review found.

A murky legal standing

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1990 that statements suspects make to undercover jailhouse operatives are considered voluntary, meaning police aren’t required to read Miranda warnings before deploying an agent. But that decision left unresolved a key question now working through California’s courts: whether investigators can keep running these operations after a suspect has already asserted their Miranda rights during an earlier interrogation.

The state’s high court declined to take up a related case in 2019 involving a Kern County man who was targeted by an undercover operative just one day after invoking his rights. Even so, Justice Goodwin Liu wrote a pointed dissent, warning that deceptive tactics used to bypass Miranda protections had become widespread across California law enforcement. “How is it possible,” he asked, “that the protections of Miranda are so easily evaded?”

How the operations unfold

According to court records reviewed by CalMatters, the undercover operatives — often called Perkins agents — are typically older and more physically imposing than the suspects they’re paired with. Many pose as seasoned, high-ranking gang members with violent reputations. In some documented cases, jail officials placed as many as five agents in a cell with a single target.

Martín Flores, a gang expert who has studied these operations extensively, said the goal for many detainees becomes proving themselves to the undercover agent, largely out of self-preservation. “If you look weak and vulnerable, you’re going to become the prey,” he said.

Records show jail cells wired with hidden recording equipment, substantial payments made to operatives, and staged evidence designed to prompt suspects into talking.

Scrutiny across Southern California

CalMatters identified Perkins operations conducted in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Orange, Santa Barbara and Santa Clara counties. Riverside County’s first documented operation dates to 2014, and records show its law enforcement agencies now run several such stings weekly — roughly half of them on behalf of outside agencies whose identities were not disclosed.

Earlier this year, the 4th District Court of Appeal overturned the conviction of a Riverside County man, who has consistently maintained his innocence, after finding investigators violated his rights by continuing an operation after he had invoked his right to counsel. The court ruled that once a suspect invokes and does not waive that right, continued efforts by law enforcement to “stimulate” conversation through an operation amount to an unlawful custodial interrogation — making any resulting statements inadmissible.

Questions of racial bias

Of the cases now before the California Supreme Court, four defendants are Hispanic, four are Black and two are white; the youngest was just 18 at the time of the operation.

The California Public Defenders Association and the ACLU have urged the court to examine whether the practice disproportionately affects people of color. They point to an analysis by the Riverside County Public Defender’s Office of roughly 880 murder cases from January 2015 through June 2023, which found Black defendants were targeted in Perkins operations at more than four times the rate of white defendants, while Latino defendants were targeted at twice the rate.

In San Diego County, public defenders have filed the state’s first Racial Justice Act petition connected to a Perkins operation, a law that allows defendants to challenge convictions they believe were tainted by racial bias. Their review of roughly 40 operations found agents repeatedly used racial slurs and leaned on cultural stereotypes to build false trust with suspects.

San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan pushed back on those findings, telling CalMatters that the operations are used consistently “wherever it appears that a heartless murder can benefit,” regardless of a suspect’s race, gender or background.

A veil of secrecy

Law enforcement agencies have been notably resistant to releasing information about how Perkins operations are funded, staffed and trained. CalMatters filed nearly two dozen public records requests with agencies in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino, Orange and Santa Clara counties — almost all of which were denied.

It wasn’t until attorneys from the law firm Covington & Burling, working with the First Amendment Coalition, pressed the issue over several months that a limited set of records was ultimately released, offering a rare glimpse into a practice that has otherwise remained largely hidden from public view.

Original source: CalMatters

The post 5 Things to Know About Undercover Police Stings Inside California Jails appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

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

The post Inside California’s Growing Use of Jailhouse Sting Operations to Extract Confessions appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.