Daniel Flores v. Christian Pfeiffer, Warden

Petitioner Daniel Flores is an innocent young man indefinitely incarcerated for murder. The government purposely charged Flores with a low-level drug crime in order to place him in an adjoining cell to a highly paid and experienced confidential informant. The informant claimed to be a high-ranking member of the Mexican Mafia—a well-organized, ruthless prison gang—in order to coercively elicit a confession from Flores for a murder case in which Flores was a major suspect. By alternating Mexican Mafia threats to assassinate Flores with promises to rescind the assassination order only if Flores confessed to murder, the informant induced a false confession from Flores, which formed the entire structure of the prosecution’s case. In allowing the Government to place a jailhouse informant in an adjacent cell to that of Flores, and by directing the informant to threaten Flores with assassination, this decision moves the California courts and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals into conflict with this Court’s decisions in Arizona. v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 282 (1991), along with related Supreme Court and Circuit Court cases. Further, a contradiction specifically arises with the California courts from their own law in Dominguez v. Stainer, No. CV 12-8280 AG, 2014 WL 1779546 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 30, 2014); where a confession induced by the same informant as in Flores was deemed to be involuntarily and the case remanded for retrial without the confession. The Questions Presented are: 1. Are a defendant’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment due process rights violated by the placement of a paid confidential informant in an adjacent cell who is