Local News in Brief : Bar Offers to Assist Jail Informant Probe

The 26,000-member Los Angeles County Bar Assn. on Wednesday joined smaller defense bar organizations in asking the Los Angeles County Grand Jury to formally investigate the use of jailhouse informants by local law enforcement agencies.

In a three-part resolution approved by the group’s board of directors, the county bar association offered to assist the grand jury in finding lawyers to conduct the probe. The grand jury announced last week that it wants to look into the use of informants and said it has asked for legal help from the state attorney general’s office. But the attorney general’s office has turned down the request.

Calls for an investigation of informants came in response to longtime jailhouse “snitch” Leslie Vernon White’s demonstration that he could gather enough information through various ruses to fabricate the murder confession of a defendant he had never met.