Get Active Subscribe Support Us

DRUG DRAMA: THE BIG CHILL

Imagine yourself tucked away from the world, safe and sound in your home.

You're far from the madding crowd.  But in a few heart-stopping moments, your world is shattered.  In an instant, you're shot dead in the middle of your American dream that turned, without warning, into a chilling nightmare.  A nightmare where the good guys are the bad guys, and it is all very real.

Donald P.  Scott, 61, was shot to death in his home on the 200-acre ranch he shared with his wife near Malibu, Calf.  Scott wasn't a fugitive when he was killed by a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff on Oct.  2, 1992.

Scott wasn't breaking any laws.  Scott reacted to his wife's screams when members of a multijurisdictional drug task force broke down his door and entered his home in a military-style raid.

By turning a corner and pointing a handgun, he faced his judge, jury and executioner-the U.  S.  Government.

That is how the country's war on drugs affected Donald Scott.  Scott didn't have time to "just say no." Scott was an innocent man minding his business when the government, acting on an unsubstantiated tip, stormed his property looking for marijuana plants.  That's what the drug officers wanted to find to justify seizing Scott's ranch under civil forfeiture statutes: 14 marijuana plants.  They found nothing.  But, Scott's death was ruled justifiable.

Dying with him were the rights guaranteed to every American under the U.S.  Constitution.

According to information from Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilsen in "Policing for Profit: The Drug War's Hidden Economic Agenda" ( University of Chicago Law Review, 1997 ), the Ventura County District Attorney reported the main purpose of the raid was to "garner the proceeds expected from forfeiture of the $5-million ranch."

Documents provided to officers before the raid included an appraisal and a parcel map of the ranch.  A later investigation found the search warrant was issued on insufficient information.  There was never any evidence supporting marijuana cultivation on Scott's ranch.

Donald Scott's case may be one of the more dramatic war stories, but his isn't isolated.  This business of law enforcement seizing property to finance its war on drugs is flawed.  The system is designed for abuse.

The Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments protect citizens from unreasonable search and seizures, taking of private property without just compensation and unreasonable fines and punishment.  However, civil forfeiture laws focus on property, and property does not have a Bill of Rights.  Government is able to confiscate property suspected of use in a variety of criminal activities.

The federal statutes have been broadened to include more than drug- related crimes.  State legislatures have raced to keep up with federal laws.  Several years ago, the United States Supreme Court denied Tina Bennis's innocent owner defense and allowed law enforcement to take her car.  Bennis had committed no crime.  Her husband, John Bennis, was arrested after Detroit police officers watched him engage in sex with a prostitute in his car.  The state sued the couple and declared the car a public nuisance.  The state of Michigan took the car.  The Supreme Court held that Tina Bennis's innocence was irrelevant.

Blumenson and Nilsen say "both crime prevention and due process goals of our criminal justice are compromised when salaries, continued tenure, equipment, modernization and budget depend on how much money can be generated by forfeiture."

In addition to the abuses of power that killed ordinary citizen Donald Scott, these statutes enable the real bad guys, the drug kingpins, to buy their freedom by simply relinquishing valuable assets.  Information from Blumenson and Nilsen report that 80 percent of all seizures go without criminal prosecution.  It is little wonder approximately 60 percent of the prison population are minor players in the drug drama.

The government has succeeded in undermining and circumventing the constitutional rights of its citizenship for profit in the name of protection.  Opposition is unpopular.  Sane critics many times are exiled into political "no-man's land" or at the very least called anti-law enforcement.

This is the wrong way to fund law enforcement.

Lord Chief Justice of England, Baron Lane, wrote at the end of the 20th Century: "Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight.  Oppression doesn't stand on the doorstep with a toothbrush, moustache and swastika armband-it creeps up insidiously.  .  .step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate citizen realizes that it is gone."

After the events of Sept.  11, the nation is ripe for far-reaching abuse of civil rights.

While our citizenry has necessarily agreed to tougher scrutiny, we must remain vigilant in protecting what our government says its willing to fight for: freedom and the protections of those freedoms as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.