Informant says police, prosecutor told him to lie

A former paid police informant told a state court judge that two Detroit police officers and a Wayne County prosecutor told him to lie on the witness stand in a 2005 case — and that the judge in the case approved that perjury. The Detroit Free Press reports on this corruption trial for the accused:

Povish is the key witness in the perjury and conspiracy case against former prosecutor Karen Plants and former Inkster cops Robert McArthur and Scott Rechtzigel, who authorities say told Povish to lie under oath about his role as an informant. They face life sentences.

Retired Wayne County Circuit Judge Mary Waterstone is charged with official misconduct — a 5-year felony — for approving the perjury.

“I was following the instructions of Karen Plants and Bob McArthur,” Povish told Detroit 36th District Judge David Robinson Jr. “They coached me.”

He also testified that Plants told him that she’d “spoke with the judge and it was OK to say I didn’t know the officers” before the March 2005 bust.

If this turns out to be true, it is all too common. In a now-famous case in Atlanta, two officers testified against their fellow officers in that city’s drug task force and said that coerced testimony from informants was absolutely routine and that the officers carried drugs in the trunks of their cars so they could plant that evidence on informants to coerce their testimony.