Judicial Control of Informants, Spies, Stool Pigeons, and Agents Provocateurs

Abstract

From early times law enforcement authorities have utilized informers. Their value in ferreting out crime was recognized in the ancient practice of English medieval law called approvement. Being arraigned on a charge of treason or felony the approver confessed his guilt and, in order to obtain a pardon, offered to appeal and convict other criminals called the appellees. If the appellees were found guilty the approver was pardoned. If the appellees were acquitted, the approver was hanged. The approvement was open to obvious abuses and Sir Matthew Hale observed that "this course of admitting of approvers hath been long disused, and the truth is, that more mischief hath come to good men by these kind of approvements by false accusations of desperate villains, than benefit to the public by the discovery and convicting of real offenders, gaolers for their own profits often constraining prisoners to appeal honest men."