Before you meet with the prosecutor to cooperate, if that is what you want to do, bear this in mind: you and only you can help yourself. You are the star of the show. Your success and what the prosecutor will think of you will be entirely up to you. You’re the LeBron James of this game. Your lawyer is only your coach. But he can only put you in the game. Other than that he is just a spectator. And at the end of the meetings, you will know whether you won the game or YOU lost the game.
This is not a case of your lawyers persuading the prosecutor and agents about how valuable of an informant you are. This is about you giving the information that will determine that fact. Good intentions don’t matter. Only good results matter. Think of it as a business. You give they give. And they give because it’s good for business. They don’t double-cross because that would be bad for business. News of government betrayal would get around pretty fast, and when it would, no one would trust them.
Every once and awhile a defendant thinks he has pulled a fast one on the government because, while he has been “truthful,” he has also been able to avoid hurting the ones he loved or feared. He’s fooling himself. The prosecutors and agents know a good informant when they hear one, and what they’ll do for that person ends up in a 5k letter. We’re not in Mexico or Colombia where “connections” will determine the outcome” If your lawyer has a good reputation you may well get the benefit of a doubt but only if there is a doubt. And if a prosecutor or an agent thinks you’re lying, believe me, it is because he knows your lying based on other information she has.
You are only as good as your information and be mindful how you conduct yourself. “Todo entra por los ojos.” Don’t seem evasive. Don’t act arrogant. Come in with hat in hand recognizing they got you, and you’re there to see how you can cut your losses. A prosecutor seeing that will not only like you, she will adopt you! And her impression of you will influence every decision she makes: what she puts in her 5k letter, what she will say on the day of sentencing, and if circumstances warrant it, whether she will recommend you for bail. There is nothing, but nothing, like the unconditional support of a prosecutor in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York. It is a golden passport.
In sum, informants will get their 5k letters, but they will get the letters they deserve. Your goal should be, whether you like it or not, or whether you are comfortable with it or not, to be the best informant they have ever heard.
David Zapp & Johanna Zapp