I haven’t read this new book by Ayelet Waldman yet, but it’s high on my wish list, and the reviews have been outstanding. Waldman is a former public defender and author of the popular Mommy Track mystery series.
According to the Review in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Some defense attorneys burn out because they come to believe they are doing little more than hastening criminals back onto the street.�

Author Ayelet Waldman, a former federal public defender in Los Angeles, had the opposite problem: She got tired of seeing “innocents” taking the fall in America’s war on drugs.
“I thought I would be seeing kingpins going to jail, but the kingpins negotiate deals and go to jail for very little time,” Waldman says.� “It’s the people who are on the lowest rungs on the ladder, and so have no information to sell, who go to prison for a long time — the guy who carries the box or the woman who takes a phone message.”
Lawmakers who set up the rules of engagement for America’s “war on drugs” instituted stiff mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of trafficking in illegal substances, so that a judge or jury can’t try to single out a particular defendant for more lenient treatment.�
“After a while, I thought, I can’t do this anymore,” she says.� “Rapists, pedophiles get out of jail sooner than my clients would.� I wasn’t helping anything funneling these people through the system.”
In Daughter’s Keeper, Waldman follows one young woman, Olivia Goodman, whose undocumented Mexican lover, Jorge Rodriguez, thinks a quick drug deal or two will provide him with enough money to get established in the United States.�
Jorge doesn’t realize that the acquaintance who proposed he get involved with selling drugs in the first place is an informant for the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.� Jorge is arrested, and in order to reduce his own sentence, he tells DEA agents that Olivia was also involved.�
Olivia had tried to dissuade Jorge from selling drugs, but because she was in the car when he went to pick up the drugs and she conveyed a phone message about the deal, she faces 10 years in prison.�

Chicago Tribune: Court bars drug-dog use in traffic stops: ‘Hunch’ doesn’t validate search

a contentious 4-3 decision, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday that police cannot use drug-detection dogs to sniff vehicles during routine traffic stops. Before police summon a dog, they must have a reasonable suspicion that the driver is carrying drugs, not […]

While I’ve been busy doing a musical and other fun stuff, a lot’s been happening in the drug war. Some of this will be old news to some of you, but these are a few stories I felt important to include. For more review of events in the past week, be sure to check […]