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When Jason Zapata was arrested for allegedly firing a gun into the air, he was thrown in a dimly lit holding cell with trash strewn throughout the ground and a damaged pay telephone on the wall. It had nothing greater than a rusted rest room, sink and three wood benches that seemed as if that they had by no means been cleaned.
Two older males with shaved heads sat within the again, eyeing the 24-year-old’s wristband that the jail used to show his private info. One was over 6 ft tall and 300 kilos. The different was coated in tattoos from head to foot. They had been gang members, they stated, in jail for homicide.
It was 2015 and Zapata, a slight Hispanic man at 5 ft 9 inches tall and 180 kilos, had by no means been incarcerated earlier than. His new cellmates within the Riverside County jail advised him that they had spent years out and in of essentially the most violent prisons. As they boasted in regards to the folks that they had stabbed to dying, Zapata tried to cover how briskly his coronary heart was beating.
“Your life is in their hands,” Zapata advised CalMatters in a latest interview. “Anything could happen to you in that type of environment. Not everybody makes it out. You gotta do what you need to do to survive in this place.”
When they pressed him about why he was in jail, he tried to tread calmly as he maintained his innocence. But because the hours wore on, the boys accused him of disrespecting them by not coming clear. Eventually, they threatened him with a “calentada” — Spanish jail slang for a beating or stabbing.
Three months later, Zapata discovered it was all a ruse: His cellmates had been undercover regulation enforcement brokers trying to acquire details about an unsolved homicide from the earlier yr. They had been half of what’s referred to as a “Perkins operation,” a controversial regulation enforcement tactic wherein a police officer or civilian poses as an incarcerated particular person to elicit incriminating statements from a suspect.
Perkins operations are widespread in California and have helped safe lots of of homicide convictions. District attorneys say they’re a robust investigative instrument that may exonerate folks or clear up crimes. The tactic is so common that regulation enforcement officers from Riverside County, a hotbed of Perkins operations, share tips about easy methods to conduct them at conferences across the state.
But the operations are underneath growing scrutiny from judges, students and protection attorneys, who say they’re coercive, threat false confessions, and disproportionately goal Black and Latino folks.
A CalMatters evaluation of circumstances in Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and Santa Clara counties exhibits that Perkins operations embody false proof ploys, jail cells outfitted with recording units, and money funds of as much as $3,000 per day to undercover operatives, often known as Perkins brokers. The brokers, usually described in court docket filings as older and bodily bigger than their targets, continuously introduced themselves as skilled gang members with a historical past of violence. In some circumstances, as many as 5 had been positioned in a cell with one particular person.
“It’s psychological war,” stated Michelle Luna Reynoso, a prison protection lawyer in San Diego. “How is this not considered cruel and unusual punishment?”
‘It could happen to anybody’
Zapata grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Hawthorne. He lived together with his dad and mom and older sister in a two-bedroom rental. His father labored at Ford and his mom labored at Verizon. He liked her home-cooked meals, skateboarding with pals via Venice Beach, and listening to Metallica and Tupac.
But when he was 15, Zapata stated he was a sufferer of a violent crime. He was within the fallacious place on the fallacious time. After being shot a number of instances, his household moved to Temecula. Their new two-story dwelling, with a pool and palm tree within the yard, made him really feel as if he had made it out of the hood. After highschool, he attended neighborhood school in San Diego and enrolled in lessons on regulation, enterprise and auto upkeep. He later labored at a Mexican bar and grill, and began an eBay retailer to promote electronics.
And then, all of the sudden, he was in jail.
The two Perkins brokers focused Zapata after a 15-year-old pal of the sufferer accused him of the 2014 homicide. At the time, she was in custody on an unrelated matter and in search of a deal. She later admitted that her statements weren’t true, in accordance with court docket information.
Zapata repeatedly denied involvement. But when the brokers threatened him, he feared what they could do, so he advised them what they needed to listen to. Still, he says, he by no means immediately admitted to the killing.
A choose set his bail at $1 million. It took roughly eight years for his case to lastly come to trial. When it did, prosecutors stated his statements to the Perkins brokers amounted to a confession. The jury agreed. He was sentenced to 25 years to life for homicide in January 2024.
“It was heartbreaking to hear the verdict,” Zapata stated. “It could happen to anybody.”
Earlier this yr, California’s 4th District Court of Appeal reversed Zapata’s conviction after discovering that regulation enforcement violated his rights in the course of the Perkins operation.
The ruling, which granted Zapata a brand new trial, might have wide-ranging implications for different Perkins circumstances, not less than 10 of which are actually stacked earlier than the California Supreme Court. Of these, 4 defendants are Hispanic, 4 are Black and two are white. The youngest was 18 years previous on the time of the Perkins operation.
Many of the circumstances heart on related points. In some, defendants allege that Perkins brokers coaxed them to waive their Miranda rights to stay silent or seek the advice of an lawyer earlier than a proper police interrogation. In others, defendants argue brokers coerced them into making incriminating statements after they repeatedly invoked their Miranda rights.
California has seen earlier legislative and authorized challenges to Perkins operations, however its excessive court docket has by no means intervened.
In 2019, the California Supreme Court rejected a petition to assessment the case of a Kern County man who was focused in a Perkins operation someday after he invoked his Miranda rights in a police interrogation.
Although the court docket declined to listen to the case, Justice Goodwin Liu had harsh phrases for regulation enforcement.
“The use of deceptive schemes to elicit confessions from suspects who have invoked their Miranda rights appears to be a pervasive police practice in California,” he wrote. “How is it possible, one might ask, that the protections of Miranda are so easily evaded?”
The Miranda loophole
Perkins operations are distinct due to their timing: They usually happen after an individual has been arrested and earlier than expenses are filed. That timing is important, as a result of as soon as somebody has been formally charged, Sixth Amendment rights kick in and the particular person can’t be interrogated and not using a lawyer current.
Protections underneath the Fifth Amendment, together with Miranda rights, assure {that a} suspect won’t be topic to custodial interrogation and not using a warning. Those protections, ensuing from the well-known 1966 United States Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona, are designed to protect in opposition to coercion in a police-dominated setting. Once invoked, all interrogation should cease.
But roughly 20 years later, the court docket held that statements made by a suspect throughout a Perkins operation are voluntary; due to this fact, Miranda doesn’t apply.
The 1990 ruling hinged on the case of Lloyd Perkins, who was positioned in an Illinois jail cell with an undercover police officer and an incarcerated informant. They roped him right into a pretend plan to flee from jail. As their planning was underway, they requested him if he had ever “done” anyone. He responded by implicating himself in a homicide that happened years earlier. Perkins later argued that his statements shouldn’t have been admissible as a result of he was not suggested of his Miranda rights beforehand.
In an 8-to-1 resolution, the excessive court docket disagreed. So lengthy as suspects have no idea they’re talking with a authorities agent, justices reasoned, the pressures that exist in a custodial interrogation are absent.
“When a suspect considers himself in the company of cellmates and not officers, the coercive atmosphere is lacking,” former Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote within the majority opinion. “Miranda forbids coercion, not mere strategic deception by taking advantage of a suspect’s misplaced trust in one he supposes to be a fellow prisoner.”
Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Harvard Law School and one of many nation’s main consultants on confidential informants, stated the choice created a loophole in Miranda.
“Perkins operations are efforts by law enforcement to take advantage of the loophole to get confessions by using informants, without triggering a finding that the suspect is actually being interrogated — in other words, being pressured in a police-dominated atmosphere to confess,” she stated.
Natapoff stated using informants and Perkins operations, particularly, are coercive, inhumane and lack transparency.
“Maybe the most famous problem with the use of informants — famous because it gets litigated the most — is the unreliability,” she stated. “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.”
But Greg Totten, chief government officer of the California District Attorneys Association, stated prosecutors view statements within the context of the general case.
“We look for corroboration, when we can find it, to make sure that the statements are intrinsically accurate and sound. We do our due diligence,” he stated. “In the justice system, we have a responsibility not just to secure convictions but to protect the innocent from being prosecuted.”
‘They wouldn’t cease questioning me’
The two Perkins brokers in Zapata’s case shared a cell with him for a complete of three hours and 20 minutes, in accordance with court docket information. The cell was electronically monitored in real-time by James Dickey, a Riverside County Sheriff’s investigator.
After about an hour, the Perkins brokers had not obtained any details about the homicide, so Dickey pulled Zapata out of the cell. He took him upstairs and had him stand in a police lineup. On his method again to the cell, Dickey advised Zapata that someone had recognized him because the shooter. It was a lie.
According to court docket information, Dickey requested Zapata whether or not he needed to talk with him in regards to the homicide. At that time, Zapata invoked his proper to authorized counsel, saying he wouldn’t discuss with out an lawyer current.
When Dickey returned Zapata to his cell, he introduced he can be charging him with homicide. He closed the cell door and walked away. No lawyer was supplied.
Dickey’s gambit was the primary of not less than three so-called stimulation ways that regulation enforcement used on Zapata, in accordance with court docket information. Because folks in jail are sometimes reticent to overtly talk about their expenses, the ploys are meant to “stimulate” dialog by introducing new info. That can embody fabricated DNA outcomes, lineups or video surveillance that officers like Dickey current to suspects to get them to unwittingly discuss in regards to the case with the particular person they assume is their cellmate.
Iris Blandón-Gitlin, a psychology professor at California State University Fullerton who research Perkins operations, stated the false proof ploy is a “very dangerous tactic” as a result of it dangers coercion, false confessions and misguided info.
“It manipulates people’s reality,” she stated. “And so they believe it. They don’t understand it, but they believe it and so they choose to confess — even falsely.”
When the Perkins brokers overheard Dickey say Zapata can be charged with homicide, they instantly started peppering him with questions, in accordance with court docket information.
“They wouldn’t stop questioning me,” Zapata testified at trial.
Zapata continued to disclaim the allegations, however in accordance with court docket transcripts reviewed by CalMatters, the brokers advised him they didn’t consider him and stated he was disrespecting them by not divulging particulars. That was when Zapata stated they started to threaten him with a “calentada.”
“There was no doubt in my mind that I was in imminent danger … At that point I continued to lie and say what I said,” Zapata stated. “I wouldn’t have said what I said if it wasn’t for the threats.”
When Dickey took the stand, he described his observations from throughout the jail, the place he was watching a dwell feed of the operation.
“The atmosphere was upbeat,” he stated. “Aggressive is not anything that I observed. Threatening was not anything I observed.”
But many components of the recording had been inaudible.
“It’s, in my view, a very poor quality tape,” stated Riverside County Superior Court Judge John Davis, who ultimately allowed parts of the tape to be admitted.
Hundreds of convictions
Zapata’s case unfolded a few yr after Riverside County’s first Perkins operation. Since then, Dickey and others within the Riverside County District Attorney’s workplace have traveled the state to coach regulation enforcement on the tactic.
In 2024, Dickey and Riverside County Deputy District Attorney David Tahan delivered a presentation at a Deputy District Attorney Association Homicide Symposium in Santa Rosa. Along with their formal titles, they launched themselves because the “Perkins coordinator” for his or her respective businesses and stated that they had performed lots of of operations all through California.
CalMatters obtained their slide presentation via a California Public Records Act request from the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s workplace, which attended the symposium. The workplace initially refused to launch the doc, agreeing to make it public solely after attorneys from the Covington & Burling regulation agency wrote demand letters on CalMatters’ behalf.
The presentation reveals that Riverside County performed its first Perkins operation in 2014. Its Perkins operation program, which Dickey and Tahan known as “a state model,” runs a number of operations every week — roughly half of that are performed for unnamed exterior businesses. Over half of the operations contain gang-related murders, they stated.
Dickey and the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department declined CalMatters’ request for an interview. Tahan and the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office didn’t reply to a number of interview requests.
The 66-slide presentation included suggestions for recruiting brokers, easy methods to time arrests and “recipes for success.” Dickey and Tahan outlined the steps in an operation, beginning with conferences and recorded pre-briefs. From there, the operation begins, stimulations observe, then an interview, and a recorded debrief. It concludes with “proper reporting / discovery.”
According to Dickey and Tahan, Riverside County Perkins operations are modeled after packages developed by the sheriff’s division and district lawyer’s workplace in Los Angeles County, the place the operations are prolific.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office established uniform procedures for Perkins operations in February 2017, in accordance with public information obtained by CalMatters attorneys. Former Chief Deputy District Attorney John Spillane introduced the brand new procedures in a particular directive, requiring that deputies submit a submitting guidelines, pretrial discovery guidelines and case closing guidelines for all Perkins operations.
Court information from a case filed earlier than the California Supreme Court this yr present that 85 out of 400 homicide convictions involving Perkins operations in Los Angeles County occurred after a suspect had invoked their Miranda rights. That accounting was from simply certainly one of a number of items inside the workplace, suggesting the quantity is probably going a lot larger, in accordance with the information.
“These operations produce conviction after conviction,” stated Scott Sanders, a prison protection lawyer who uncovered the unlawful use of jailhouse informants in Orange County greater than a decade in the past. “It’s a really rich zone for tons of misconduct. 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 … These are the lines that you would think are too far.”
‘A linebacker sized’ cellmate
All 10 Perkins challenges earlier than the California Supreme Court come from San Diego, Riverside and Los Angeles counties. The earliest dates to 2014.
One entails Michael Goehner, who was sentenced to 48 years to life in jail for homicide in March 2024. Goehner, who’s white, has maintained his innocence since his arrest in August 2021, when he was 25. In his petition, he alleged that two Perkins brokers repeatedly discouraged him from chatting with an lawyer and as an alternative suggested him to say self-defense when he spoke with regulation enforcement.
In one other case, David Allen, who’s Black, was arrested on suspicion of homicide in 2016 in Los Angeles County when he was 28. During an interrogation, officers lied and advised him that they had clear proof he was responsible, which Allen repeatedly denied.
After he invoked his proper to stay silent 4 instances, court docket information present detectives unlawfully continued their interrogation. They advised him he wouldn’t see his daughter once more “because (he) refused to tell the truth,” in accordance with court docket filings. He ultimately admitted he had acted because the lookout in the course of the taking pictures. But his statements couldn’t be utilized in court docket, a prosecutor later advised the detectives, “unless Allen could be made to repeat the statement to an undercover police agent.”
Three days later, Allen discovered himself in a cell with a person who launched himself as a gang member. Allen was convicted of homicide and sentenced to 45 years to life in jail after making incriminating statements to the Perkins agent. In a petition to the California Supreme Court, he argued that his Fifth Amendment and federal due course of rights had been violated and known as for his convictions to be reversed.
“By deliberately creating a coercive jailhouse setting and inserting a linebacker-sized ‘gang’ cellmate to draw appellant into incriminating discussion, law enforcement did precisely what these cases forbid: It used deception and a proxy to bypass an already-triggered constitutional protection,” Allen’s lawyer wrote within the petition.
The California District Attorneys Association and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office maintained Allen’s statements had been voluntary, and argued that Perkins operations can profit each the prosecution and the protection. In court docket filings, the workplace stated the operations are “vital to the truth-finding process” in its Justice Conviction Review Unit, which evaluations claims of innocence. Since the unit opened in 2015, the workplace claimed roughly one third of its 16 exonerations resulted from Perkins operations.
“In each of these cases, the evidence from Perkins operations completely proved the convicted defendant’s innocence,” attorneys wrote. “These innocent individuals would not have been exonerated but for the Perkins operations.”
But Jasmin Harris, director of coverage for the California Innocence Coalition, stated the workplace has misrepresented the ‘success’ of Perkins operations.
“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 stated. “We don’t think that deception should be used on the front side or the back side of a conviction.”
Racial disparities in who’s focused
The California Public Defenders Association and American Civil Liberties Union urged the California Supreme Court to look carefully on the extremely coordinated police follow as a result of they are saying it produces excessive racial disparities and perpetuates racially biased policing.
“Perkins operations are often framed as ‘gang’ investigations, which have long been directed at historically over-policed communities of color,” attorneys wrote in a quick filed in help of Allen.
They cited latest information from Riverside County Public Defender’s Office, which discovered important racial disparities when it analyzed 881 homicide circumstances between January 2015 and June 2023, together with 145 Perkins targets. The evaluation confirmed Black defendants had been greater than 4 instances as prone to be focused in a Perkins operation than white defendants. Latino defendants had been focused at over twice the speed of white defendants, they discovered.
Martín Flores, a gang skilled who makes a speciality of Perkins operations, has testified in additional than 100 circumstances all through San Diego, Riverside, Orange, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties that concerned an operation. He stated brokers current themselves as “active, older homies with influence in the county jail and in the streets.”
“It’s someone who, in perception, can make your life miserable or harmful in the county jail,” he stated. “In my opinion, most of these Perkins operations, it’s about impressing that agent…And why does that matter? Because it’s survival. If you look weak and vulnerable, you’re going to become the prey.”
Public defenders in San Diego have additionally voiced concern over racial bias in Perkins operations. In an evaluation of roughly 40 Perkins operations, they discovered brokers constantly used racially discriminatory language, together with slurs and cultural stereotyping, to develop a false sense of rapport and generate incriminating statements.
Those findings had been raised within the case of Adrian Rodriquez, a younger Hispanic man who was in juvenile detention for violating his probation in May 2023. Rodriquez, then 18, was transferred to an grownup jail, the place he shared a cell with two Perkins brokers who recognized themselves as gang members. One had satan horn tattoos throughout his bald head and stated he had stabbed his cellmate 70 instances whereas serving time in federal jail for tried homicide, in accordance with court docket filings.
Law enforcement later advised Rodriquez that he had been booked for homicide. His case has not but gone to trial and he has pleaded not responsible.
In October 2025, Rodriquez filed California’s first-ever Racial Justice Act petition relating to a Perkins operation. The regulation, handed in 2020, permits folks to problem a prosecution, conviction or sentence that they consider was primarily based upon racial bias. The San Diego Superior Court final month discovered that Rodriquez met his burden to proceed to an evidentiary listening to.
In his petition, Rodriquez argued that the Perkins agent exhibited bias towards him by exploiting his Latino id, main him to make incriminating statements. It detailed how an agent used “racialized manipulation” in the course of the operation, together with using the n-word almost 70 instances.
An skilled evaluation included in his petition discovered that Hispanic defendants in San Diego County are twice as prone to be focused in a Perkins operation in comparison with white defendants. The odds go up for Hispanic youngsters, in accordance with court docket filings, which stated they’re seven instances extra prone to be the topic of a Perkins operation in comparison with white youngsters.
San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan advised CalMatters in an interview that Perkins operations “are applied across the board, wherever it appears that a heartless murder can benefit…no matter what the race, what the gender, what the orientation, what the cultural background or anything is.”
She stated Perkins operations, if completed meticulously, are probably the greatest instruments to pursue the reality. The operation is resource-intensive, she stated, which signifies that every thing have to be completed by the e book.
“Like every tool that is available to pursue justice, it can be misused,” she stated. “You can take almost any tool and if you don’t do it correctly and by the book, you’re going to mess it up. It’s not a reflection on the investigative tool being used, it’s a reflection on the people using it and that they’re not using it correctly.”
Zapata awaiting new trial
Roughly a decade after Zapata discovered himself in a cell with two Perkins brokers, he was granted a brand new trial. The 4th District Court of Appeal dominated his statements shouldn’t have been admitted at trial. Zapata stated he was speechless. He paced round his cell as he learn via the choice.
“When a suspect invokes and does not waive the right to counsel, and a known law enforcement officer continues to ‘stimulate’ a Perkins operation in a manner that amounts to a custodial interrogation, the suspect’s resulting incriminating statements are inadmissible,” the justices wrote.
One month later, the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office requested that the California Supreme Court throw out the appellate opinion, arguing that it contradicts settled case regulation and creates confusion.
On May 13, the California Supreme Court rejected the request. That means Zapata will quickly be transported from jail to a Riverside County jail the place he’ll await a brand new trial.
Zapata stated it’s a win for now. He is making an attempt to remain constructive, figuring out that he’s returning to a county the place he believes misconduct runs rampant.
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get a fair trial when I go back,” he stated. “I’m fighting for my life at this point. I know I’m innocent so the truth shall set me free. I’m hoping that when I get there, they recognize it and act accordingly. Hopefully, I’ll be able to be home soon.”
Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow. Robert Meeks contributed to this story.
This undertaking was accomplished with the help of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights at the side of Arnold Ventures.
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