The Houston Chronicle reports today that the war on drugs nets small-time offenders.

"Texas' war on drugs punishes few major importers and dealers but imprisons thousands caught with less than a sugar packet full of cocaine or other illegal drugs."

"The battle rages most fiercely in Harris County. Of the 58,000 drug convictions won by local prosecutors over the past five years, 77 percent involved less than a gram of a drug, according to district court data analyzed by the Houston Chronicle. Harris County sent 35,000 of these small-time offenders to jail or prison."

"The numbers suggest that these men and women are collateral damage in the war on drugs, arrested because they were easy targets rather than objects of a grand strategy. The impact is felt most harshly in black neighborhoods."

Death Penalty foes gathered today in Chicago "to draw attention to flaws in the administration of capital punishment and encourage one of the anti-death penalty movement's darlings, Gov. George Ryan."

"Ryan, who in 2000 imposed a moratorium on executions in Illinois, is considering the clemency petitions of more than 140 death row inmates. Forty former death row inmates from around the country spoke briefly about their cases at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's law school. Two of the inmates read a letter asking Ryan to grant clemency to all 160 prisoners on death row in Illinois."

"Center director Lawrence Marshall also asked for a blanket clemency, saying Ryan "holds the fate of 160 men and women in his hands." "How do we tell the mother of a death row inmate that we have to kill your son even though we know the system is wrong ... to bring closure to other people?" Marshall asked."

Ryan leaves office in a month. Retired judges have written him , asking him to grant clemency to any death row inmate impacted by the unfair system in Illinois. Families of the victims want him to deny clemency.

We doubt Ryan will grant blanket clemency to all on Death Row, as he has said he will not. Instead, he has said he will take a hard look at each case individually. We would prefer a blanket commutation. As the New York Times opined a few months ago:

"Governor Ryan, who has made fairness in administering the death penalty a hallmark of his governorship, will end his tenure on a high note if he takes one last stand for justice and issues a blanket commutation."

We hope he at least takes the retired judges' advice, and commutes the death sentence to one of life without for any death row prisoner who didn't get a fair trial or sentencing hearing, is retarded, was a juvenile at the time of the offense, was a minor player in the offense, or may be factually innocent of the crime.

Ryan has faced political pressure on the issue before and has always chosen to stand up for what he knows is right. We don't expect any less of him this time.

Nick Bergamo, a college student in LA got a DUI. He gave a blood test, and the results came out at twice the legal limit. But Bergamo knew he hadn't been driving under the influence. He got a lawyer, not just any law firm, but that of Lawrence Taylor, one of the foremost DUI gurus in the country. Turns out, the LAPD botched the test by mixing up his blood sample with someone else's. The case got dismissed.

So if you get a DUI in LA this holiday season, or really, anywhere, make sure your lawyer re-tests the sample.

"With the stakes so high, Bergamo's parents sought out the law offices of Lawrence Taylor, a firm that deals exclusively with DUI cases. Lawyers in that firm automatically retest blood samples tested by the police."

"Taylor, who has written books on the subject of DUIs, said test results from police labs are often unreliable. Sometimes the equipment is not calibrated correctly, he said, or sometimes police put too much or too little of a blood preservative in the sample, which can affect results."

"I'm not a real big fan of crime labs and their criminalists. They're clueless. But most attorneys know less, and that's why they can get by," said Taylor.

"In Bergamo's case, the test results from the LAPD showed that the blood alcohol level in the sample was 0.148. When Taylor's lab performed the test, the results were 0.13. For Bergamo, even the retested results seemed impossible. His attorney then conducted a blood-typing test to determine whether it was Bergamo's blood. That test failed to exclude him as a possible donor."

"The young man, however, was insistent that a mistake had been made. A DNA test was his last hope to prove it. His parents agreed to pay the additional expense of such a test, which runs about $1,200."

"The results finally cleared Bergamo. A judge earlier this month dismissed the case and made a factual finding of innocence on his behalf."

"Since the dismissal, word of Bergamo's case has spread among local defense attorneys in court hallways and legal chat rooms on the Internet."

"DUI practitioners dealing with blood analysis should be aware that crime labs continue to fail in their chain-of-custody record keeping," Taylor warned other lawyers in a recent e-mail message. "And the LAPD apparently remains a prime culprit."

We're spreading the word even further. Thanks to Ann Salisbury of Two Tears in a Bucket for sending us the link to the article.

There will be DUI checkpoints and lots of arrests this holiday season. If you want to brush up on the law and defenses relative to Driving under the Influence, check out our sister site CrimeLynx which has a section devoted to drunk driving defense here.

We rarely defend DUI cases, so please don't take this as a solicitation for our legal services. This is merely a public service announcement.

President Bush has set his sights on changing the ideological balance on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the most influential appeals court in the nation.

Bush plans to add two judges to the court in the next few months. Vacancies have existed for years, but the Republicans precluded Clinton from making appointments claiming there wasn't enough of a workload to justify more judges.

Now that the Republicans have control of the Senate, they are abandoning that position, and Bush is going to nominate the 12th and 13 judges to the Court.

"The nominations, together with those of two conservative Washington lawyers chosen by the White House last year, give Bush an opportunity to tilt the ideological balance of a court that is surpassed in influence only by the Supreme Court."

"The last two seats on the D.C. Circuit have been empty -- one of them for more than a decade -- because Senate Republicans repeatedly through the 1990s blocked efforts by President Bill Clinton to fill them by contending that the judges would be a waste of taxpayers' money."

"A White House official said Bush considers filling those seats to be part of a revised selection method the president announced this fall to try to accelerate the placement of judges on the federal bench."

This is totally disingenous. Why doesn't he come out and tell the truth, that he's in power and so is his party, and he's going to use that power to overload the federal courts in this country with ultra-conservatives who will be on the bench for the rest of their lifetimes, perhaps 30 years or more, and the rest of us just have to eat it. And that he intends for this to be his legacy.

Read your copies of the Constitution now. Five years from now, although the words may be the same, they most likely won't mean the same thing.

The Dec. 23 issue of U.S. News and World Reports takes a look at LA Police Chief Bill Bratton and the job ahead of him. The article notes how well his policies worked in New York and asks whether the same policies will work in LA or whether his script will read differently in the City of Angels?

In other Bratton news, the Chief is considering hiring ABC's John Miller--not as a public relations spokesman which many expected, but as an advisor on homeland security.

We spoke with Miller at Bratton's swearing in late October about whether he'd leave 20/20 to work with Bratton again, and he said, "I'm always up for an adventure."

"As a newsman, he is best-known for a 1998 interview in which Osama bin Laden threatened to launch attacks on U.S. civilians. A high level source at ABC News, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Miller was considering an offer to join the LAPD. "We know that John has spoken with the chief about the job and we have given him our blessing," the source said."

Bratton and Miller make a good combo and we bet its a done deal with just the details being ironed out.

On whether we can believe Trent Lott that he has changed his beliefs, Sam Heldman (Ignatz) has a pretty good litmus test and then applies it to Lott:

"So how can we begin to tell the difference between those who changed their beliefs on this issue of great importance, and those who did not? Let's even leave aside Senator Lott's voting behavior for purposes of this discussion. Here is one way you can tell: people who make major transformations on important moral beliefs tend, if they have actually made an honest change, not to whitewash their past. Let me be more plain: if you've really changed, you don't lie about where you changed from. True change is accompanied by honesty."

So has Trent Lott been honest? Go read Sam and find out why not.

The Canadians want to decriminalize pot possession, as we reported here. U.S. Drug Czar John Walters is opposed to the idea and suggests it will present a problem with border crime. He went to Buffalo last week to make a speech about it.

The czar of anti-drug enforcement in the U.S. told us Thursday that we in Canada shouldn't lower the penalties for possession of pot because marijuana is bad for us, especially if we're thinking of crossing the border.

Just to make sure we heard him, John Walters came all the way from Washington to Buffalo to deliver his message, just as a committee of MPs was recommending that people who possess or cultivate less than 30 grams of pot should not face criminal prosecution, but a fine.

Walters, the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, should have saved himself the trip. How we deal with drugs or any other domestic issue is up to us, not the White House. The laws we pass apply to our citizens, and how they are perceived in the U.S. or anywhere else has nothing to do with it.

Walters would like us to deal more harshly with the traffickers and big-time growers, and we should. But we're dealing with our recreational pot-smokers the way we think is appropriate, and Walters should butt out.

Matt Welch takes on Bush's continued appointment of Republicans with criminal histories.

"If [Winona] Ryder lived in Florida instead of California, she would join the 31% of the black voting-age population there in being barred from enjoying the most basic of democratic rights. (Conversely, if Florida had Maine's more liberal voting laws, Al Gore would be president.)"

"Regardless of what you think about a system that disenfranchises more than four million Americans, the rationale is clear enough: For citizens wishing to have a say in public life, some crimes are beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour. The rule of law, and perhaps even the imperative of national self- defence, demands no less."

"Unless, that is, the criminal is a Republican politician."

First up for Welch is Elliott Abrams: "In October, 1991, Abrams pleaded guilty to two counts of a misdemeanor far graver than anything Winona Ryder has inflicted upon society: "Withholding information" from the United States Congress."

"Abrams lied to the representatives of the American people about his team subverting the law, in order to manipulate Congress to enact legislation that it probably wouldn't if it knew the truth. He violated his oath, broke the law and abused power."

Now Abrams is "Condoleezza Rice's right-hand man in the Middle East."

Welch says "Abrams is worth mentioning at length not because his case is extraordinary, but because the opposite is true: Bush has been making a habit of appointing known liars and once-convicted Republican officials to key government positions."

As to Poindexter, architect of the invasive yet-to-be-implemented Total Information Awareness program, Welch says: "Poindexter, Reagan's national security advisor, was convicted in 1990 of five felony counts of lying to Congress, obstructing Iran-Contra investigators, destroying evidence and so on. An appeals court overturned the conviction on the grounds that it had relied partially on testimony Poindexter gave under immunity. He was appointed this February to run the Pentagon's much-maligned Total Information Awareness program."

There's more, go on over and read the whole thing.

Don't miss the Beast's 50 Most Loathsome People in America --it's funny, provacative and just mean enough without being ugly. (link via Rittenhouse).

Here's a synopsis of why civil libertarians are uneasy:

"The Los Angeles City Council gave initial approval Friday to a law that would allow police to seize and sell vehicles used by motorists while soliciting prostitutes."

"The ordinance, which was given unanimous council approval but requires a second vote next Tuesday, was endorsed by Police Chief William J. Bratton as a way to address a problem plaguing some Los Angeles neighborhoods."

"Bratton said a similar law proved effective in New York City when he headed the department there. "It's intended to be another tool to discourage people from using their cars to solicit prostitution," Bratton said after the vote. LAPD officials said the department has primarily targeted prostitutes and pimps for enforcement action in the past. Friday's vote represents the city's most ambitious effort to go after their customers."

Police intend to use the law in sting operations in which "female police officers pose as prostitutes and tape solicitations before making arrests. Proceeds from car sales would be divided between the Police Department and the city attorney's office."

The ACLU charges that the law is unconsitutional. But a similar ordinance in Oakland was upheld by the California Supreme Court.

In Bennis v. Michigan, 116 S. CT. 994 (1996), the Supreme Court upheld the seizure and forfeiture of a wife's interest in a car she owned jointly with her husband after her husband used the car without her knowledge to patronize a prostitute. The car was declared a "public nusiance" under Michigan law, which did not have an innocent owner defense.

The Supreme Court ruled neither 14th Amendment's due process nor the unjust takings clause of the 5th Amendment was violated by the law's failure to include a defense for innocent owners--an innocent owner being one who could establish that they had no knowledge or reason to know the vehicle would be used illegally. Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion. Justices O’Connor, Scalia, Thomas and Ginsburg joined in the result.

Justice Ginsberg and Thomas wrote separate opinions, agreeing with the result. Ginsberg said:

“Michigan has decided to deter Johns from using cars they own (or co-own) to contribute to neighborhood blight, and that abatement endeavor hardly warrants this Court’s approbation”.

Justice Thomas said:

“This case is ultimately a reminder that the Federal Constitution does not prohibit everything that is intensely undesirable” ....

“The limits on what property can be forfeited as a result of what wrongdoing- for example, what it means to ‘use’ property in crime for purposes of forfeiture law- are not clear to me”.

Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Souter and Breyer, dissented:

“The principal use of the car in this case was not to provide a site for petitioner’s husband to carry out forbidden trysts. Indeed, there is no evidence in the record that the car had ever previously been used for a similar purpose. An isolated misuse of a stationary vehicle should not justify the forfeiture of an innocent owner’s property on the theory that it constituted an instrumentality of the crime”.

“Apart from the lack of a sufficient nexus between petitioner’s car and the offense her husband committed, I would reverse because petitioner is entirely without responsibility for that act. Fundamental fairness prohibits the punishment of innocent people.”

Justice Kennedy also dissented, arguing:

“This forfeiture cannot meet the requirements of due process. Nothing in the rationale of the Michigan Supreme Court indicates that the forfeiture turned on the negligence or complicity of petitioner, or a presumption thereof, and nothing supports the suggestion that the value of her co-ownership is so insignificant as to be beneath the law’s protection.”

****
The moral of the story is that if you live in a county or city that has a public nuisance abatement law, check and see if it provides a defense for an innocent owner. If not, contact your legislator or city councilperson and ask them to draft remedial legislation.

Busted: Stone Cowboys, Narco-Lords and Washington's War on Drugs
Mike Gray, Editor

Buy the Book Today!

Busted, a new anthology, builds a convincing argument for the legalization of all drugs -- from heroin to methamphetamine to LSD. Spanning three decades, it tells readers why the War on Drugs has failed, charting the violence, chaos, and corruption that the War on Drugs has spawned. It includes frontline reporting from all over the world, literary journalism, public records, and provocative commentary from the left and right.