How Jailhouse Snitches Send Innocent People to Death Row

This week, guest host Billy Binion is joined by Pamela Colloff, a reporter at ProPublica and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, as well as the author of the new book Catch the Devil. The book tells the story of Paul Skalnik, a prolific jailhouse informant whose testimony helped send dozens of men to prison, including one man who remains on death row despite serious questions about his conviction.

Colloff explains how Skalnik repeatedly traded supposed jailhouse confessions for leniency, why police and prosecutors continued to rely on him despite his long history of deception, and how the incentives built into the criminal justice system can reward unreliable testimony. She and Binion also discuss why wrongful convictions are so difficult to overturn, how courts can compound errors long after new evidence emerges, and what Skalnik’s extraordinary story reveals about the dangers of trusting the state to correct its own mistakes.

0:00—How a con artist became a star witness

10:56—A 1985 Florida murder case

20:29—Procedural hurdles to overturning convictions

27:21—Colloff’s meetings with Skalnik

32:21—Colloff’s experience with Skalnik’s victims

37:51—Why did law enforcement trust Skalnik?

43:05—Media coverage

46:18—Research for Catch the Devil

50:21—How did Colloff start her career?

53:45—The evolution of magazine journalism

1:00:25—The true crime genre