Drug WarRant

There have been some additional developments in the case in Atlanta. New information shows that Fabian Sheets (who had been arrested for drugs and was trying to “cooperate”) gave the police Johnston’s address (whether that was a mistaken address or he was just making it up, we don’t know). The police then screwed up royally.
Radley puts it all together in the only way that makes sense:

The pieces fit together like this: This raid was conducted based on nothing more than a tip from Sheats, a convicted drug felon who was looking for leniency. For whatever reason, he sent police to Johnston’s home. The narcotics officers then hid behind the anonymity courts afford to informants, and fabricated the stuff about the buy. They took a shortcut. When the raid went bad, they chased down an informant they’d used in the past — White — and asked him to lie to cover their asses, just as White says they did.
Even worse, it now looks like they were willing to intimidate him if he didn’t cooperate. …

This case isn’t going to go away. The press in Atlanta is pursuing it. The feds are investigating, and national bloggers are staying on top of it. And police chief Pennington seems to be doing all the right things in calling for full investigations. Atlanta may see some positive change out of this, and Kathryn Johnston’s death may actually have some meaning.

Via Drug Policy Alliance

Your voices were heard. We’re happy to report that Senator Biden has negotiated a significant change to the mycoherbicide section of the ONDCP bill. The change would prohibit the study from being conducted outside United States territories. This limits the study to a U.S. lab and ensures that there’s no chance of an environmental disaster in Latin America.

Good job folks!

We urge you to keep up your calls to the House and Senate in opposition to the current version of ONDCP Reauthorization. It does not contain any provisions mandating that the drug czar set annual objectives for reducing drug overdoses and the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis and other infectious diseases. Further more, it changes federal law to prohibit more than five percent of High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) funding from being spent on drug prevention, threatening prevention programs in the Appalachia, California, Florida, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and the Northwest.

In a continuing travesty of justice, the appeal of Richard Paey’s 25 year sentence for possessing his own pain medication was rejected by the Florida District Court of Appeals. For full details, see Radley Balko and Maia Szalavitz.
The dissent by Judge James Seals was the only positive moment:

suggest that it is cruel for a man with an undisputed medical need for a substantial amount of daily medication management to go to prison for twenty-five years for using self-help means to obtain and amply supply himself with the medicine he needed…
I suggest that it is unusual, illogical, and unjust that Mr. Paey could conceivably go to prison for a longer stretch for peacefully but unlawfully purchasing 100 oxycodone pills from a pharmacist than had he robbed the pharmacist at knife point, stolen fifty oxycodone pills which he intended to sell to children waiting outside, and then stabbed the pharmacist…
It is illogical, absurd, cruel, and unusual for the government to put Mr. Paey in prison for twenty-five years for foolishly and desperately pursuing his self-help solution to his medical management problems, and then go to prison only to find that the prison medical staff is prescribing the same or similar medication he had sought on the outside but could not legitimately obtain. That fact alone clearly proves what his intent for purchasing the drugs was. What a tragic irony.

The majority essentially said that they had no reason to question whether the sentence was cruel and unusual and that it was up to the legislature. Talk about defaulting on your charge to defend and interpret the constitution!
The thing is, I kind of understand it.
And it’s probably also the reason that the U.S. Supreme Court let Weldon Angelos’ 55-year prison term for marijuana stand by refusing to hear the case on Monday.
The courts just don’t know how to deal with the phrase “cruel and unusual.” How do you define it. If they say that Weldon’s 55 year sentence is cruel and unusual, then the obvious next question is “Well, what about 54? 53? 52? 51? 50?…” The courts are terrified at the notion of being asked to draw specific lines for every crime, so they simply buck it back to the legislature and shake their heads with sympathy for the poor person rotting in jail for the rest of their life. The Justices spend 8th Amendment efforts on debating what form of death penalty is the least painful and run away from the real issues.
Sure, it’s difficult. But it seems to me that it is the responsibility of the courts to find a way to address this. Otherwise they are completely abandoning the 8th Amendment to the whimsy of legislators, and sending the message that their is no jail term that is too long.

That does seem to be the message he’s giving here — he goes to a school to announce a massive $209,662 federal grant to a school district to do drug testing…
Well, unfortunately, for the Drug Czar, they’ve got some smart students in Florida:

Craig Zyburo, a Barron Collier senior, asked Walters why random testing targets these drugs only, while alcohol has been reported to be the most popular drug among high school students and there are more tobacco-related deaths.
“Unfortunately, alcohol does not stay in the blood long enough for the test to detect it,” explained Walters.

Ah. So the purpose of these drug tests is to get kids to switch to alcohol? Now what about the fact that the tests are focused on athletes. Certainly that means they’ll concentrate on performance enhancing drugs, right?

“Athletes should be tested for steroids only because that’s the only drug they use,” said Zyburo after the presentation. However, as Walters explained during a press conference held after the student assembly, the tests required to detect steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs, are much more expensive. While a regular drug test costs between $10 and $40 each, steroid testing can cost up to $100 each.

So we’ll just spend a lot of money testing for marijuana because we can.
Everybody line up and pee in a cup for the Drug Czar.

“bullet” The articles continue: This one by Mitch Cole in Southern Utah (channeling Radley Balko): Hold SWAT team no-knock raids accountable for mistakes
“bullet” Judge confirms ruling that California counties must comply with the state’s medical marijuana law, despite the conflicts with the federal law.

Well, I guess this made it OK that they used military force to go in and kill this woman.
If I’ve got it right, the 1.93 grams they found would be about this much.

Look, I don’t care if they found 1.93 tons of marijuana in her bedroom — it still wouldn’t justify the policy, let alone the piss-poor application of it.

“bullet” LEAP’s Peter Christ gets in the action with this OpEd in the Rutland (VT) Herald.

“bullet” Cynthia Tucker has another good piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution: Time is ripe to overhaul city’s drug war.

[Note: The messageboard is temporarily out of order this morning, so I’m putting the alert here.]
Mark Souder is trying to do some damage before he loses his subcommittee chairmanship.

CONGRESS TO VOTE ON POISONING PEOPLE THIS WEEK
Earlier this year we warned you about a bill in Congress that would revive controversial research on the use of toxic, mold-like fungi called mycoherbicides to kill illicit drug crops in other countries. This provision could unleash an environmental disaster of monumental proportions. But Congressman Mark Souder and Senators Hatch and Biden are rushing it to the House and Senate floors this week. Here are three things you can do:
1) Call your two U.S. Senators and one U.S. Representative today or tomorrow.
If you don’t know who they are, simply call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and give them your address. They’ll connect you directly with their offices. You can also look them up online at http://actioncenter.drugpolicy.org/ctt.asp?u=10054&l=134461 and http://actioncenter.drugpolicy.org/ctt.asp?u=10054&l=134462 .
When you get a staffer on the phone, politely say something like:
“My name is [your name] and I live in [your city]. I’m calling to urge [the Senator or Representative] to oppose the ONDCP Reauthorization bill if it comes to the floor this week, especially its mycoherbicide provision. Please let me know how [the Senator/Representative] votes.”
If they ask, the mycoherbicide section is Section 1111. The bill being brought to the floor is a combination of a House and Senate bill, so it doesn’t have a bill number yet. It will be brought to the Senate floor under a unanimous consent agreement and to the House floor under suspension of the rules–both of which limit debate.
2) Phone calls are the most effective way of stopping this bill. But if you don’t feel comfortable making calls or you don’t have the time, we urge you to fax or e-mail your elected officials instead. You can contact your two Senators at http://actioncenter.drugpolicy.org/ctt.asp?u=10054&l=134461 and your one Representative at http://actioncenter.drugpolicy.org/ctt.asp?u=10054&l=134462.
3) Please forward this alert to everyone you know. Unless thousands of Americans contact Congress, this bill could pass by the end of this week.
Sincerely,
Bill Piper
Drug Policy Alliance Network
MORE INFORMATION
Mycoherbicides have already been extensively studied over the last thirty years – and the results make it clear that they are not an option for controlling crops of coca or opium poppies. They attack indiscriminately, destroying fruit and vegetable crops, and sickening animals and humans as well. The toxins mycoherbicides produce contaminate soil for years, so that nothing can grow where they have been. Mycoherbicides are so destructive that governments have even stockpiled them as weapons!
Incredibly, the proposal now before Congress advocates using mycoherbicides in “field studies” in countries such as Colombia and Afghanistan – something the world would certainly see as an act of biological warfare.
For more information on mycoherbicides, read the recent report commissioned by DPA, “Repeating Mistakes of the Past: Another Mycoherbicide Research Bill” (PDF: http://actioncenter.drugpolicy.org/ctt.asp?u=10054&l=134463 ).

Another convert to the Kathryn Johnston story — the Associated Press.
This is pretty amazing for the AP! Atlanta police give few details for ‘no knocks’

Atlanta police often offer only cursory details when asking judges for so-called “no-knock” warrants that allow them to burst into homes unannounced, like the one used when an elderly woman was killed in a shootout with plainclothes officers as they stormed her home, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. […]
An AP review of all no-knock warrants filed in Atlanta’s Fulton County this year found that authorities often give scant detail when applying for the warrants, which are typically used to search for drugs and weapons. […]
“One of the problems we have in the country are that lower-level judges who issue search warrants are notorious for being rubber stamps,” said Donald E. Wilkes Jr., a University of Georgia law professor who studies the practice. “This is compounded by the fact that police tend to use these boilerplate allegations for no-knock search warrants.”
Use of the warrants has ramped up as the war on drugs has intensified, said Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore police officer who teaches police studies at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“The problem is that you do get cases where police bust down the wrong door and people die,” he said. “And to me, it’s not worth it. I don’t really care if they flush the drugs down the toilet. I don’t care if drugs are destroyed. So what? It’s not like the drug war is being won.” […]
The NAACP is now calling for the establishment of a civilian review board with subpoena powers. On Sunday, the Rev. Al Sharpton called for a congressional inquiry into incidents like Johnston’s and the fatal police shooting on Nov. 25 of 23-year-old groom-to-be Sean Bell in New York.

Wow! And while they should have credited Radley Balko somewhere in there, I’m also impressed with the fact that they were able to get experts to speak out without even needing him.
This is powerful stuff. And it could give some politicians cover. Even more reason to start asking questions of your local city council or your newspaper as to what safeguards are in place in your community.

Glenn Greenwald’s Unclaimed Territory has picked up the ‘House of Death’ story big time with In the other “war” — more of the same.
Glenn’s been a strong opponent of the drug war (he even let me co-post there once) and his blog is extremely important — sort of the voice of the rationally outraged liberal. He gives the issue a scathing treatment (and read the comments — it seemed to uniformly outrage his intelligent readers as well). Perhaps with his chiming in, the story will get the additional attention and scrutiny that it deserves.