By Mrs. Eileen Hunter — about the author. Posted August 11, 2026.
When Tony Hunter’s 2022 application for post-conviction relief needed an expert on jailhouse informants, it turned to one of the field’s longest-standing scholars. This page presents Professor Robert M. Bloom’s qualifications, what his research shows about informant testimony generally, and what he concluded — under penalty of perjury — after reviewing the record of State v. Hunter.
Who he is
Robert M. Bloom has taught at Boston College Law School since 1973, as a full professor since 1994, in criminal procedure and comparative criminal procedure; he has also taught at Boston University, Temple, University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, and Kwansei Gakuin in Japan. He directed a clinical program representing indigent defendants, served on sabbatical as a prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and has handled, supervised, or consulted on hundreds of criminal cases. Since 1999 his research has centered on informants: his book Ratting: Use and Abuse of Informants in the American Justice System (Praeger, 2002); “Jailhouse Informants” in the ABA’s Criminal Justice (2003); and “What Jurors Should Know about Informants: the Need for Expert Testimony,” Mich. St. L. Rev. 345 (2019). He has testified as an informant expert in Connecticut, Washington and Kentucky courts — roughly eleven cases in all — and has consulted for the ACLU on the use of “informant tanks.” (Declaration ¶¶ 1–3, Exhibit B-1 to the Application for Post-Conviction Relief filed December 30, 2022.)
What the research shows
- Jailhouse informants played a role in nearly one in five DNA exonerations (Innocence Project); a 2004 Northwestern study found informant testimony in 45.9% of wrongful capital convictions. (¶ 5.)
- Informant testimony is “notoriously unreliable” yet uniquely persuasive — a claimed confession sways jurors more than almost anything, including eyewitnesses. (¶ 6.)
- Benefits usually arrive after testimony — letting informants testify that nothing was promised, and potentially keeping deals outside Giglio disclosure. “Everyone in the system knows how the game is played.” (¶¶ 8–10.)
- Informants gather convincing detail from media coverage, from relatives attending hearings, and from each other. (¶ 12.)
- Prosecutors lean on informants “particularly when it will shore up an otherwise weak case” — and studies show humans detect deception at barely better than chance. (¶¶ 13–15.)
- The ABA resolved in 2005 that “no prosecution should occur based solely upon uncorroborated jailhouse informant testimony.” (¶ 16.)
What he found in the Tony Hunter case
In September 2022, Professor Bloom reviewed the testimony, recorded statements, and criminal histories of all four informants in State v. Hunter, plus contemporaneous press coverage. His declaration documents the claim-by-claim comparison — set out in full on the informants page — and notes that no cautionary jury instruction about informant testimony was ever given. His sworn conclusion:
“It is my opinion that the circumstances of this case, specifically the lack of external corroboration for the informants’ testimony, the media contamination of the informants, the number of cases the informants were providing information about and their status as career offenders facing lengthy sentences at the discretion of the prosecution, the informants’ perceived and/or real incentives to provide information against Tony Hunter and to testify falsely, and the failure to give a cautionary jury instruction, raise serious risks that the informants’ testimony was fabricated and/or false.”
(Declaration ¶ 18, sworn December 21, 2022.)
The limits, stated plainly
Professor Bloom is a retained defense expert, and his declaration is explicit that he “has not offered an opinion on the credibility of any particular informant in any particular case” — his role is identifying the risk factors a fact-finder should weigh. The application his declaration accompanied was denied without an evidentiary hearing; no court has heard his testimony in this case. (Procedural history.)
Related: the three informants, compared against the record · the individual files: Kennedy · Comanche · Wiggins · Nelson · case timeline.