Drug WarRant

Utah Parents Sue City After Daughter Is Killed Allegedly “Assassination Style” By Now-Disbanding Special Narcotics Unit

Melissa Kennedy and Frederick Willard, parents of the late Danielle Willard, are suing local police in an extraordinary case in which they say that their daughter was shot to death “assassination style” by a now disbanded special narcotics unit that has been accused of corruption and abuse. […]

West Valley City is a small suburb of Salt Lake City. Danielle Willard, 21, was fatally shot in the back of her head around 1:30 pm by defendants Shaun Cowley and Kevin Salmon. The complaint states “since the tragic shooting of Danielle Willard, it has been uncovered that Officers Cowley and Salmon were engaged in a pattern and practice of illegal conduct and widespread and systemic corruption, sanctioned by the West Valley Police Department, culminating in the unjustified and senseless killing of Danielle Willard.” The Complaint details allegations of corruption in the narcotic unit leading up to its disbanding. […]

The unit was disbanded after the disappearance of money and drugs as well as the tossing out of roughly 100 drug cases.

Apparently it was only after a routine investigation into the shooting that the missing drugs and money and widespread corruption was discovered in the task force. It had to be pretty major to result in 100 drug cases being tossed. And yet the parents of this girl have to file a lawsuit in order to try to find out what really happened to their daughter.

Jacob Sullum discusses one of the provisions in the Colorado pot regs: Can Colorado’s Limit on Pot Purchases by Nonresidents Survive Constitutional Challenges?

The marijuana regulation law that Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed last month includes a quarter-ounce limit on pot purchases by visitors from other states. Colorado residents, by contrast, may buy up to an ounce at a time. As I have mentioned before, making the purchase limit hinge on residency seems inconsistent with Amendment 64, the marijuana legalization initiative that is now part of Colorado’s constitution. The quarter-ounce rule may also be vulnerable to challenge under the U.S. Constitution, since it discriminates against residents of other states.

Regardless of the Constitutional questions, one of my first reaction is bemusement that this is such a big deal.

Has anyone driven from Illinois or Iowa into Missouri? As soon as you cross the border, you see things like this:

In fact, you’re likely to see five or six of these stores right next to each other just inside the border.

Now, everyone knows that the fireworks sold here are legal in Missouri, but not in Illinois or Iowa. And everyone knows that the reason that these stores are at the border… is to sell them to people in Illinois and Iowa. And while theoretically, you might get arrested for bringing them into those states, odds are you won’t.

And unlike marijuana, these things can blind you or cause you to lose a finger.

This morning, the White House is hosting an event: White House Children of Incarcerated Parents Champions of Change. It’s an event to honor some folks who have gone out of their way to work with and help children of incarcerated parents. That’s a good thing.

After all, children of incarcerated parents are generally more likely to end up in trouble with the law themselves, and stopping that cycle is incredibly important.

On the other hand, Rafael LeMaitre (ONDCP Communications Director) tweeted about the program:

Watch live NOW: http://t.co/dXE6CABQOG Children of incarcerated parents. This is why Obama Administration’s #DrugPolicyReform plan matters.

No, this is why real drug policy reform matters. The ideas we have will dramatically reduce the number of incarcerated parents. The ideas put forth by the ONDCP will merely divert a few of the incarcerated into drug courts.

Marijuana Possession Enforcement is Down Dramatically Under President Obama by Keith Humphreys

This is one of the most bizarre defenses of President Obama that I’ve ever seen.

Humphreys’ basic thesis is that even though marijuana arrests have remained high during President Obama’s term, marijuana use has gone up, so arrests as a percentage of use has gone down (the number of possession arrests per 1,000 days of use). He uses that statistic as proof that Obama has been kinder when it comes to marijuana arrests.

Really?

The first very obvious objection: the notion that arrests as a percentage of use is a statistic that has any relevance. There’s no evidence that law enforcement, all other things being equal, would actually arrest more people for marijuana possession if marijuana use goes up. So the fact that they didn’t isn’t evidence of some kind of lessening of enforcement emphasis.

But that’s only the beginning. Marijuana possession arrests are done by the states and local cops, not the feds. And there’s no evidence that local and state marijuana policy is easing due to federal influence.

After all, federal funding on enforcement has remained stable, despite their rhetoric. And if anything, states have been defying the federal government in terms of medical marijuana and recreational marijuana legalization. When police in Washington and Colorado stopped arresting people for mere possession, it sure wasn’t at the urging of President Obama!

So, Keith is giving Obama credit for something that probably doesn’t exist, and if it does, is more likely happening in spite of Obama.

… or freedom or democracy.

Obama helps nip pot legalization in Latin America. How about in US?

For all the political flak that President Obama is receiving for digital surveillance of Americans, he deserves some praise for protecting Americans on another front. His administration has helped dampen moves by some Latin American leaders to legalize marijuana in the Western Hemisphere. […]

Yet with two states in the US (Washington and Colorado) having legalized recreational use of pot last year, some in Latin America saw an opening to push Mr. Obama to bend.

Fortunately, his secretary of State, John Kerry, did not accommodate such voices at the OAS assembly. “These challenges simply defy any simple, one-shot, Band-Aid” approach, he said. “Drug abuse destroys lives, tears at communities of all of our countries.” Other administration officials have been working for months to squash the region’s legalization efforts. […]

The uncertainties of legalizing pot, let alone the moral arguments against government promoting its use, call for Obama to be vigilant against legalization. He has now done that strongly abroad. He must do much better at home.

“Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective, but it occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches. The Fourth Amendment must prevail” – Justice Antonin Scalia, dissent in Maryland v. King (2013).

Legal Hemp On The Ropes: Senate Effort Running Into Stiff Law Enforcement Opposition

….

This is an open thread.

In 2003, I wrote a feature on the then Drug Enforcement Administration Deputy Director nominee: DEA Bad Girl Michele Leonhart.

In it, I talked about her horrendous lack of ethical standards in her work with super-snitch Andrew Chambers:

When Michele Leonhart moved to St. Louis, she hooked up with the most prolific snitch of all time — Andrew Chambers.

The details of Andrew Chambers’ career as a super-snitch are mostly hidden (partly to protect him, and partly to protect the DEA). Much of what we know about Chambers comes from an excellent investigative report by Michael D. Sorkin And Phyllis Brasch Librach for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on January 16, 2000 and several follow-up reports later that year.

Here are some of the facts:

• Chambers’ career as a snitch spanned an amazing 16 years, from 1984 until 2000, and he was credited with 291 investigations, including 76 the DEA considers “significant.”
• He traveled all over the world for the DEA, but his home was St. Louis, and his second home Los Angeles.
• For his snitch work with the DEA, he was paid over $2.2 million. DEA regulations limit informants to a career total of $200,000, but those regulations can be waived. The DEA says its second-highest paid informant has received about $500,000.
• Since he also worked for the FBI, U.S. Customs Service, U.S. postal inspectors, Internal Revenue Service, Secret Service and state and local police, his total take may have been much more.
• He lied. He lied under oath on the stand. He lied on the stand repeatedly, beginning the year after his recruitment in 1984.
• For years, some prosecutors and many defense attorneys had expressed concerns about Chambers’ perjury. In 1993 in California, a 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling agreed that Chambers lied on the stand. In 1995, the 8th U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis added its voice: “The record, however, clearly demonstrates that Chambers did in fact perjure himself . . .”

The DEA protected Chambers repeatedly, and avoided notifying prosecutors and defense attorneys about Chambers’ past. At one point, the Drug Enforcement Agency and Justice Department lawyers stonewalled for 17 months, fighting a public defender who was trying to examine the contents of DEA’s background check on Chambers.

Later, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Wolf stated that it was clear that the drug agents never put any damaging reports into Chambers’ file — even though DEA regulations require it.

Finally, the DEA conducted an internal review of Chambers’ career, and although there was some talk of reprimanding DEA supervisors, the report was never made completely public, and the DEA refused to agree to stop using Chambers. Janet Reno finally intervened in 2000 and Chambers was deactivated as an informant.

During all this time, Chambers’ biggest fan was Michele Leonhart.

At one point, she was asked whether it was time to stop using Chambers given all the problems with his credibility. “That would be a sad day for DEA,” she said. “And a sad day for anybody in the law enforcement world… He’s one in a million. In my career, I’ll probably never come across another Andrew.” […]

The most startling statement in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigation of Andrew Chambers was from Michele Leonhart:

“The only criticism (of Chambers) I’ve ever heard is what defense attorneys will characterize as perjury or a lie on the stand.”

She continued by saying that once prosecutors check him out, they’ll agree with his admirers in DEA that he’s “an outstanding testifier.”

That’s the key. To an agent like Leonhart, getting the bust and getting the conviction is all that matters. The testimony is good if it leads to a successful conclusion (from her perspective). Why nitpick about the truth?

I thought that was the end of it, unti I read today: DEA reactivates controversial fired informant

PHOENIX — A government informant who was terminated by the Justice Department years ago amid accusations of serial perjury has been reactivated and is working an undercover drug case with DEA agents in Phoenix, prompting allegations of government misconduct by a defense lawyer in a pending case. […]

The DEA conducted an internal probe in 2000 documenting Chambers’ dishonesty after defense lawyers and the media criticized the pattern of perjury and a lack of federal oversight. The Republic has obtained a copy of the 157-page Management Review, which says the DEA deactivated Chambers indefinitely as a confidential source on Feb. 2, 2000.

Yet, somehow, he resurrected his career and surfaced in Phoenix about three years ago in a sting that targeted defendant Luis Alberto Hernandez-Flores, accused as the kingpin in a major drug-trafficking organization.

Cameron Morgan, an attorney for Hernandez-Flores, filed a motion to dismiss charges or suppress testimony after uncovering the informant’s background.

“The DEA rehired Mr. Chambers, is using him in investigations all over the country, is again paying him exorbitant amounts of money and refuses to provide discovery about what he’s up to,” Morgan wrote in a petition under consideration by U.S. District Judge Stephen McNamee. “If Chambers were nothing more than a run-of-the-mill criminal, that would be one thing. But both Chambers and his defenders in the DEA brag that he is a con man extraordinaire.”

This is the state of justice in our country.

Racial Bias in Marijuana Arrests is Worse Than You Thought

In six states, plus the District of Columbia, blacks are over five times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites are. The national average? Black Americans are arrested nearly four times as much. And it’s not because of increased use of the drug: according to the New York Times’s report, black and white Americans have about the same rates of marijuana use overall. So what’s going on?

Essentially, the Times explains, it’s probably one of a handful of biases written into the system of local law enforcement nationwide. The data they’re using is from 2010, and was also used by the ACLU for a new report. The ACLU cites the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant Program as one possible reason for the disparity. That’s because, they explain, the program incentivizes increasing drug arrest numbers by tying the statistics to funding. Law enforcement officials then concentrate on lower income neighborhoods to keep those numbers up, finding the lowest hanging fruit of crimes to enforce.

Good to see this getting some play in the media. People should be outraged by this.

I’m on the road again. Hosting our annual community New York Theatre trip. This time, I have a record-breaking 95 people on this trip, seeing 6 shows as a group, and I’ll be conducting walking tours of the city as usual.

Needless to say, this is likely to keep me pretty busy, and I may not have time for much blogging, but be sure to check out the excellent discussions and links in the comments, and I’ll add a new Open Thread every now and then.

We’ll be seeing “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” with David Hyde Pierce and Sigourney Weaver, “Matilda” – the musical based on the Roald Dahl book, the revival of the musical “Pippin,” a new play directed by David Cromer at Lincoln Center: “Nikolai and the Others,” “Kinky Boots” – the musical with music by Cindy Lauper and Harvey Fierstein, and “The Assembled Parties” with Judith Light and Jessica Hecht. I’m’ also going to see “Annie” so I can say Hi to one of our former students, Jane Lynch.

Should be a great week, and I do plan on taking advantage of the restaurants as usual.