Springfield (AP) – Illinois lawmakers have created the nation’s toughest test for allowing testimony from jailhouse snitches at criminal trials. Inspired by reform of the state’s notorious and now-discarded system of capital punishment, it requires judges to make pretrial inquiries into the veracity of testimony by incarcerated informants before allowing or barring it. Testimony by snitches — those claiming to have heard a defendant boast about or confess to a crime while behind bars — has helped convict 19 criminal defendants who were later exonerated during the past three decades in Illinois, more than any other state, according to the National Registry of Exonerations .
