What to do about jailhouse snitches with reason to lie?

The prison transport van in 1984 held only two inmates: Wilton Dedge, an innocent man facing a retrial for rape, and Clarence Zacke, a notorious jailhouse snitch.

Dedge was awaiting a bond proceeding and retrial for the 1981 rape of a 17-year-old girl in Brevard County that he insisted he did not commit. Zacke was a snitch locked in prison for murder, angling for a way out.

A little more than a week later, Zacke testified against Dedge at the bond hearing. claiming Dedge had confessed to the rape, and also at the retrial that would land Dedge in prison for two consecutive life sentences.

Zacke knew how to work the system. He had testified against convicted serial killer Gerald Stano, had more than a century shaved off his original 180-year sentence, and later recanted that testimony in a telephone interview with a writer. For testifying against Dedge, Zacke later admitted, he'd hoped to receive parole.

Another two decades would crawl by as Dedge waited for his exoneration. In 2004, after serving 22 years--more than half his life--his innocence was finally confirmed by DNA evidence. In 2005, the Legislature awarded Dedge $2 million, making him the first DNA exoneree to be compensated in Florida.

Dedge's case serves as a stark reminder of the dangers of using jailhouse snitches who have little to lose when bargaining for favorable treatment in exchange for their testimony. That troubling topic was the focus when the Florida Innocence Commission met in Tallahassee on February 13.

Fat notebooks were filled with information about Florida's three exonerees convicted with false jailhouse informant testimony: Dedge, William Dillon, and Chad Heins. Details included how jailhouse snitches testified in more than 15 percent of wrongful conviction cases later overturned through DNA testing. Of the exonerees released from death row, 46 percent were convicted, in part, due to false informant testimony. Further studies have shown that jailhouse informant perjury was a factor in nearly half of wrongful murder convictions.

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In trying to prevent future miscarriages of justice, the commission first debated the idea of Florida creating a special pretrial reliability hearing, where a judge would weigh the credibility of a jailhouse informant, much like the vetting done before an expert witness is allowed to testify before a jury. Currently, Illinois law requires such a hearing, only in capital cases, with the exclusion of the informant...