"I think he just got backed up into a corner and needed the money and did what he did.... He was probably on drugs," the mother said. "I feel like I'm stabbing Mike in the back by saying so, but I really believe there may be an innocent man in prison."
A Jailhouse Informant
Bruce Lisker spent the weeks after the murder in Sylmar Juvenile Hall. He was allowed outside his cell for an hour a day, and spent it writing letters to friends. Every day at dinnertime, a nurse gave him a tranquilizer mixed with orange juice. His father's Sunday visits "were my salvation," he wrote years later. The two talked about Bruce's legal defense.
"I let my dad know again that I did not do this," he said.
At a court hearing April 4, 1983, a judge determined that Lisker should be tried as an adult -- but ordered him returned to juvenile hall.
The order went unheeded.
Three days later, sheriff's deputies moved him to the Los Angeles County men's jail. He was placed in a "segregation" area for inmates who would be at risk in the general population: youthful offenders and informants, among others.
Years later, it was revealed that Los Angeles prosecutors had formed a corrupt alliance with jailhouse informants. The snitches would claim their cellmates had confessed to the charges against them. Then they would testify about the confessions in exchange for reductions in their own charges or early release from jail.
Prosecutors had reason to suspect that many of the confessions were bogus, but used them in as many as 250 cases from 1979 to 1988, a grand jury investigation found.
The scandal led to a dramatic reduction in the use of jailhouse informants and a state law requiring that juries be instructed to view their testimony with suspicion. That would come later, however.
Within days of Lisker's arrival in the County Jail, two inmates reported that he had confessed to them. The authorities dismissed them as liars.
Soon after, a third informant came forward.
Robert Donald Hughes, then 29, was a career criminal serving time for burglary, vehicle theft and other offenses. He was also a practiced snitch. In a previous murder case, he had sworn that the accused confessed to him in jail. The man ultimately pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
In the spring of 1983, Hughes was transferred to the County Jail from state prison so he could give similar testimony in another murder case.
He wound up in the cell next to Lisker's.
