News stories are replete with ‘A reward has been offered’ but I don’t recall a news story with ‘A reward has been collected’.
Do you personally know anyone who ever got a serious reward for helping to solve a crime. I don’t mean someone who got $250 for returning a lost wallet. I mean have you know anyone who got a serious reward for helping to solve a serious crime?
I moved this from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion because it is a poll, of sorts.
Gfactor
General Questions Moderator
I wrote a staff report a while back on the topic of whether rewards get paid or not. It’s missing from the archive right now, so I’ll post an earlier draft:
**When governments or police departments offer a monetary reward “for information leading to the arrest and conviction” of people who commit crimes, how often do they ever actually pay? Specifically, did the person(s) who located the Washington, D.C. Beltway snipers ever receive the reward money?
Dan Wasser
Gaithersburg, MD**
SDSTAFF Gfactor replies:
Some people got rewards and some didn’t. In a March 2004 article titled “Sniper tipsters get reward of $500,000,” in the Washington Times, Tarron Lively reports that, “Robert Holmes of Tacoma, Wash., will get $350,000 for first notifying authorities that his friend, John Allen Muhammad, might be the shooter. Whitney Donahue of Greencastle, Pa., who called authorities when he saw Muhammad’s vehicle at a Frederick County, Md., rest stop in October 2002, will receive $150,000.” Why did the tipsters have to wait two years to get their rewards? There were lots of claimants. In a USA Today article from December 2002, Martin Kasindorf reported that the arrest prompted a barrage of calls from people demanding the reward. The police had to “decide which of the 67,000 tips is worth money.” He also pointed out that it could hurt the credibility of a witness at trial if it came out that the witness received a reward.
The practice of offering rewards or bounties for help capturing criminals and the related set of problems date back to the Roman Empire. Tacitus wrote:
(Thanks to Straight Dope Message Board member Helen’s Eidolon for directing me to Tacitus). And of course there’s the Judas thing.
More recently the idea of offering rewards for turning in criminals was tried in England, beginning towards the end of the 1600s. Thief takers were sort of combination snitch and bounty hunter, they got a reward for handing over the crooks and often testifying against them. Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker tell us on the oldbaileyonline.org website [http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/history/crime/policing.html#thief-takerstext] that the thief-takers were common from the late seventeenth century in England:
Of course, the potential for abuse was great. Hitchcock and Shoemaker point out that many thief takers blackmailed known criminals; some even became “thief-makers,” encouraging the easily swayed to commit crimes, just so the the thief taker could collect a reward for turning them in.
As you can see from the historical examples, there are problems with paying for information about crimes. Experts disagree about whether rewards are worth the cost. Some complain they tend to increase the number of bad tips, and produce sketchy eyewitness testimony. Nevertheless they are offered. But are they paid? Not as often as you might think, according to an April 2003 article by Timothy Maier in Insight on the News. In his article[http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_8_19/ai_100111642/pg_1] , Maier says authorities frequently don’t pay rewards.
The basic law on rewards is clear. They are contracts. You might not be familiar with this kind of contract, but it’s not new. There are two kinds of contracts: bilateral (in which a promise is exchanged for a promise) and unilateral (in which a promise is exchanged for an act). A famous case involving unilateral contracts is Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Co. (1893). In that case[http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/hamlyn/carlill.htm] the defendant had offered a £ 100 reward to anyone who purchased and used its special carbolic smoke ball as directed and still got the flu. The plaintiff used the ball, and got the flu. When she claimed the money, the defendant tried to back out of the deal. The court found the advertisement was a valid offer to enter into a unilateral contract, and that the plaintiff had accepted it by performing the acts requested. The same law applies to most reward offers.
For example, in Newman v. Schiff infamous tax protester Irwin Schiff appeared on a television show and offered $100,000 to anyone who called the show and cited any section of the Internal Revenue Code “that says an individual is required to file a tax return.” Newman missed the broadcast but saw a clip of it on another show. He looked up the statute and demanded the cash. The Court took pause to further debunk Schiff’s claim:
And it found that Schiff’s statement “constituted a valid offer for a reward. In our view, if anyone had called the show and cited the code sections that Newman produced, a contract would have been formed and Schiff would have been obligated to pay the $100,000 reward, for his bluff would have been properly called.” The Court ultimately ruled against Newman, though, because he hadn’t called the show (he wrote a letter). This ruling demonstrates an important feature of unilateral contracts. The offeror gets to spell out how the offer can be accepted. If the person seeking the reward doesn’t follow all of the rules and comply with all of the requirements, he gets bupkes.
In another case, Rudy Turilli, operator of the “Jesse James Museum,” offered $10,000 to anyone who could disprove his contention that Jesse James was not murdered in 1882, but in fact lived for many years thereafter under the alias J. Frank Dalton and last resided with Turilli at his museum into the 1950’s. Stella James, a relative of Jesse James, accepted the challenge and produced affidavits of persons who had identified Jesse James’ body after the shooting in 1882. Turilli denied that the evidence satisfied the requisite degree of proof and refused to pay the $10,000. He lost in court (the court found that James only needed to submit evidence sufficient to persuade an ordinary man to believe Jesse W. James was killed in 1882) and had to pay.
So how do the authorities avoid paying rewards? There are a few ways. One way is that, as we saw in the Schiff case, those seeking a reward must meet the precise conditions of the offer. Somtimes the rules get very specific about forms and deadlines and the like. Many denials really don’t comply, although the denied argue that the rules are needlessly complex or even contradictory.
And reward offers also frequently give the offering agency significant discretion in deciding whether an informant qualifies for the award. Often law enforcement agencies claim that their own investigative work broke the case, even though they may have received good tips from reward seekers. Other informants have been turned down because they turned the bad guy in for the wrong crime.
Another catch is that many of the “offers” give the agency complete discretion to grant or deny a reward. The I.R.S.'s publication 733, for example, says “The Area Director will determine whether we will pay a
reward and its amount.” While the rest of the form spells out how the I.R.S. will decide whether and how much, courts have held that the reward advertisement is not an offer. In an article called, “Snitching for Dollars: the Economics and Public Policy of Federal Civil Bounty Programs,” Ferziger and Currell describe some other problems. They discuss two cases, Barker v. Lien and Merrick v. United States. In Barker the First Circuit held that a contract between an informant and an IRS agent was not a waiver of the government’s immunity from suit. In other words, even though there might have been a valid contract, Barker couldn’t sue the government for violating it because a lowly IRS agent lacks the authority to waive immunity. The Court said that only the district director has the authority to bind the IRS in such matters
In Merrick v. United States, the IRS district director for Los Angeles told Robert Merrick that he would be rewarded for information regarding illegal tax shelters, and his reward would be calculated according to IRS Publication 733. The Federal Circuit said that this promise was enforceable against the government and sent the case back to the district court for trial.
But getting into court is only the first hurdle, as Ferziger and Currell note:
Finally, there is no oversight or tracking, according to Maier:
Add in the difficulty of suing the government in the first place, and you’ll begin to see why many rewards go unpaid.
Most courts say that reward claims against the U.S. must be initated under the Contract Disputes Act. The act imposes some requirements that don’t apply to other contract claims. Let me give you an example. In Goodin v. United States Postal Inspection Service, the Postal Inspection Service offered a reward for for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspect," in a string of bank robberies. Goodin showed the offer to Lien, and both thought they recognized the suspect. They notified the postal people separately. The robber was caught and convicted. Both filed claims for rewards. Lien got $5000. ; Goodin got zilch. Why? “Her application was incomplete because it lacked a required personal history form and photograph”, according to the investigative service. Goodin says its not true, and sought her day in court. Her lawyer sued in federal court in Minnesota, where she lived.
The Court held that under the CDA she was required to file her case either with the Postal Service Board of Contract Appeals (how friendly does that sound?) or the Court of Federal Claims. Both of which are in Washington D.C. As we have seen, even if she filed in the right place, she’d probably have lost.
What about reward offers from other countries? In Guevara v. Republic of Peru the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that suits to recover rewards against other countries are not barred by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. So you can successfully sue a foreign country in a U.S. court to recover a reward. Once you get a judgment, though, collecting it could be much tougher.
References:
Beattie, J.M., Policing and PUnishment in London, 1660-1750 (2001)
Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company, UK Law Online: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/hamlyn/carlill.htm
Dalrymple, Mark, The Law and Practice of Rewards to Recover Stolen Art, AXA Art Converence, November 2005: http://www.axa-art.co.uk/sps/mark_dalrymple.pdf
Ferziger, Marsha & Currell, David, “Snitching for Dollars: the Economics and Public Policy of Federal Civil Bounty Programs,” 1999 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1141 (1999)
Guevara v. Republic of Peru, 468 F.3d 1289, 1305 (11th Cir. 2006): http://caselaw.findlaw.com/data2/circs/11th/0516235p.pdf
Hay, Douglas & Snyder, Francis, eds., Policing and Prosecution in Britain1750-1850 (1989)
Kasindorf, Martin, “Clamor for Sniper Reward Rising,” USA Today.com, December 1, 2002: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2002-12-01-sniper-reward-usat_x.htm
Krug v. United States, 168 F.3d 1307, 1310 (Fed. Cir. 1999): http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=fed&navby=case&no=985130
Lerner, Pablo, “Promises of Rewards in a Comparative Perspective,” 10 Ann. Surv. Int’l & Comp. L. 53 (2004)
Lively, Tarron, “Sniper Tipsters Get Reward of $500,000,” The Washington Times, March 21, 2004: http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20040320-115329-1257r.htm
McGinnis, Janice, “Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company: Influenza, Quackery, and the Unilateral Contract,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 1988: http://www.cbmh.ca/archive/00000165/01/cbmhbchm_v5n2mcginnis.pdf
Maier, Timothy, “Reward Not Paid: Authorities Regularly Offer Financial Incentives for Tips That Lead to a Crime Being Solved, but Criminologists Claim Large Payouts are Rare,” Insight on the News, April 1, 2003: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_8_19/ai_100111642/pg_1
“Montgomery County Holds News Conference,” (transcript), CNN Transcripts, November 26, 2002: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0211/26/se.04.html
Policing in London before the Bobbies
How Suspects were Apprehended, The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 2003: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/history/crime/policing.html#thief-takerstext
Whitelaw, Kevin, “Just a Phone Call Away: U.S. Officials Pay Out Millions to Tipsters for Help Finding Terrorists,” U.S. News & World Report, January 31, 2005: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050131/31terror.htm
“Who Gets The Sniper Reward?” CBSNews.com, October 25, 2002: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/25/national/main526951.shtml
—SDSTAFF Gfactor
Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
washington post.com story "“In some places, [rewards] generate a lot of information, and others they don’t.” anther is quoted as saying “In my own personal opinion, my own experience, it’s not always about the high dollar. It’s the anonymity,” McDade said. “The people who give tips don’t necessarily want the reward. They want the quality of life. They want the drug dealer off the corner or the prostitute off the street.”
My OP was, Do you personally know anyone who ever got a serious reward for helping to solve a crime. I don’t mean someone who got $250 for returning a lost wallet. I mean have you know anyone who got a serious reward for helping to solve a serious crime?
I never got an answer. The Washingtonpost article suggest you probably have not.
I’m also curious who would tell, if they got some bucks for ratting out a friend, or a known mafioso.
Best wishes,
hh