Figure in Jail Informant Probe Sentenced to Prison

Leslie Vernon White, the central figure in an investigation into abuses by jailhouse informants was sentenced Wednesday to five years and eight months in state prison after pleading guilty to purse snatching and failure to appear in court.

White, 31, was a member of a small group of jailhouse informants who regularly traded information about other inmates’ alleged confessions in return for leniency in their own criminal cases. He had been a witness in more than a dozen Los Angeles County felony cases, many of them murders.

The veteran informant triggered a major investigation by authorities last fall when he demonstrated for sheriff’s deputies that he could convincingly fabricate a murder confession from an inmate he had never met. White used a jail telephone and posed as a bail bondsman, police officer and prosecutor to get information about a murder case from law enforcement officials.

White’s revelations prompted an investigation by the Los Angeles County Grand Jury into the use of jailhouse informants by the district attorney’s office. The purpose of the review was to determine whether any defendants had been wrongly convicted because of bogus informant testimony.

The prosecutor’s office also imposed tighter restrictions on the use of informant testimony by its staff.

White, a convicted kidnaper and car thief, was in jail last fall on a parole violation charge stemming from his having snatched an elderly woman’s purse containing $8 on Wilshire Boulevard in March, 1968.

White bailed out of jail last December when his parole hold expired, but was to have returned to court in January for sentencing on his guilty plea to the purse-snatching charge.

But Superior Court Judge Ernest M. Hiroshige revoked the guilty plea in February over White’s objections. Horoshige said that, given White’s prior convictions for robbery, kidnaping and grand theft--as well as his failure to appear for sentencing in the purse-snatching case last Jan. 19--he deserved more than the 16 months in County Jail called for under a plea-bargaining arrangement.

White’s case was sent back to Municipal Court, where he was ordered to stand trial in Superior Court.

His trial for purse snatching was scheduled to begin Wednesday, but White instead pleaded guilty ton one count each of grand theft and failing to appear for sentencing.

In his plea, White agreed to be sentenced to five years and eight months in state prison, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lawrence M. Longo said. He was sentenced by Superior Court Judge Gary Klausner.