Nonviolent Drug Crimes Mass Release May Be One of Largest in U.S. History WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is preparing to release roughly 6,000 inmates from federal prison as part of an effort to ease overcrowding and roll back the harsh penalties given to nonviolent drug dealers in the 1980s and 1990s, according to federal law-enforcement officials. The release, scheduled to occur from Oct. 30 to Nov. 2, will be one of the largest one-time discharges of inmates from federal prisons in American history, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing matters that had not been publicly announced by the Justice Department. [continues 611 words]
(AP) - Thousands of federal inmates serving sentences for drug crimes are set for early release next month under a cost-cutting measure intended to reduce the nation's prison population. The more than 5,500 inmates set to go free in November are among the first of what could eventually be tens of thousands eligible for release. The U.S. Sentencing Commission voted last year to retroactively apply substantially lower recommended sentences for those convicted of drug-related felonies. The commission, an independent panel that sets federal sentencing policy, estimated the prison terms would be cut by an average of 25 months. [continues 200 words]
Biggest One-Time Release of U.S. Inmates The Justice Department is set to release about 6,000 inmates early from prison - the largest one-time release of federal prisoners - in an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the past three decades, according to U.S. officials. The inmates from federal prisons nationwide will be set free by the department's Bureau of Prisons between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. About two-thirds of them will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release. About one-third are foreign citizens who will be quickly deported, officials said. [continues 1037 words]
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is set to release about 6,000 inmates early from prison - the largest one-time release of federal prisoners - in an effort to reduce overcrowding and provide relief to drug offenders who received harsh sentences over the past three decades. The inmates from federal prisons nationwide will be set free by the department's Bureau of Prisons between Oct. 30 and Nov. 2. Most of them will go to halfway houses and home confinement before being put on supervised release. [continues 207 words]
In a rare and heartening example of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have united around a proposal for a major reform of federal criminal sentencing laws. The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 unveiled last week by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, a conservative Republican, and Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, a liberal Democrat, would limit the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences, increase the discretion of judges in sentencing and make it easier for defendants in drug cases to take advantage of "safety valves" that can spare them mandatory minimums. [continues 351 words]
The sentencing reform bill introduced in the Senate on Thursday falls far short of what is needed, but it is a crucial first step on the long path toward unwinding the federal government's decades-long reliance on prisons as the answer to every ill. For starters, it is worth noting the bipartisan nature of this legislation. In a Senate that can't agree on the time of day, top Republican and Democratic senators - most notably Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, as well as a longtime supporter of harsh sentencing laws - negotiated for months to produce a concrete set of fixes. [continues 440 words]
Pretty much everybody from Barack Obama to Carly Fiorina seems to agree that far too many Americans are stuck behind bars. And pretty much everybody seems to have the same explanation for how this destructive era of mass incarceration came about. First, the war on drugs got out of control, meaning that many nonviolent people wound up in prison. Second, mandatoryminimum sentencing laws led to a throw-away-thekey culture, with long and pointlessly destructive prison terms. It's true that mass incarceration is a horrific problem. Back in the 1970s the increase in incarceration did help reduce the crime [continues 441 words]
WASHINGTON - A bipartisan group of Senate leaders on Thursday announced a joint effort to ease unduly long prison sentences and enact other criminal justice reforms, but chances that Congress will actually act on the issues are slim, given that lawmakers in the House are developing separate proposals. The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, introduced by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., top leaders on the Senate Judiciary Committee, calls for shorter prison terms for drug felons and eliminates the so-called "three strikes" rule mandating life sentences. It also seeks to end mass long-term incarceration of prisoners that has led to severe prison overcrowding and skyrocketing costs. [continues 342 words]
Pretty much everybody from Barack Obama to Carly Fiorina seems to agree that far too many Americans are stuck behind bars. And pretty much everybody seems to have the same explanation for how this destructive era of mass incarceration came about. First, the war on drugs got out of control, meaning that many nonviolent people wound up in prison. Second, mandatory-minimum sentencing laws led to a throw-away-the-key culture, with long, cruel and pointlessly destructive prison terms. It's true that mass incarceration is a horrific problem. Back in the 1970s the increase in incarceration did help reduce the crime rate, maybe accounting for a third of the drop. But today's incarceration levels do little to deter crime while they do much to rip up families, increase racial disparities and destroy lives. [continues 699 words]
A jury did not believe a Miami-Dade man who insisted he grew 15 marijuana plants inside his home only to help ease the suffering of his cancer-stricken wife. The six-member jury on Friday night convicted Ricardo Varona of trafficking more than 25 pounds of marijuana and operating a marijuana growhouse. Taken into custody to await sentencing, Varona faces a mandatory minimum of three years in prison. Varona, 43, was the second South Florida man in the past six months to claim "medical neccesity" in operating a marijuana growhouse. Unlike in the Varona case, a Broward jury in March acquitted 50-year-old Jesse Teplicki, who admitted he grew 46 plants to battle years of nausea and fatigue. [continues 381 words]
The Drug Trade Is Entrenched in the Tenderloin, the Only Place in S.F. Where Drug Users Have Some Political Power They're outside on the corner when John Lorenz leaves his girlfriend's Tenderloin apartment in the morning; they're there when he returns. Sometimes he catches them on a shift change - like union workers clocking out after their eight hours, they're punctual. "Regular as clockwork," he told me recently. "They" are a couple of teenage males - Honduran, says Lorenz, comfortable enough to engage them in small talk - who come into San Francisco from the East Bay for work. They're parked on the street corner, selling drugs. [continues 1391 words]
Prosecutors Get Too Much Power As They Stack Charges and Threaten Long Terms The new consensus that something is wrong with American criminal justice is welcome. The amazing number of people in prison - a measure on which, adjusting for population, no other nation comes close - is indeed a sign that the U.S. system is broken. It's good that the will to fix it seems to be growing. Yet dwelling too much on that one statistic is unwise. There's a danger of missing the point. [continues 481 words]
The City Different is in a unique position, at just the right time in history, to have a small but powerful impact on how low-level drug offenders are treated, and, ultimately, on whether or not they are offered a chance at recovery. With increasing awareness of the social, economic and political effects of mass incarceration, it is more important than ever to begin thinking outside the box about the war on drugs. Some $60 billion is being spent annually to keep people incarcerated, and destructive mandatory-minimum sentences continue to flood our jails and prisons with individuals who are nonviolent drug offenders. [continues 501 words]
The new consensus that something is wrong with American criminal justice is welcome. The amazing number of people in prison a measure on which, adjusting for population, no other nation comes close is indeed a sign that the U.S. system is broken. Yet dwelling too much on that one statistic is unwise. There's a danger of missing the point. Consider, for instance, the idea that the leading cause of mass incarceration is long prison sentences handed down to nonviolent drug offenders. Not so. [continues 369 words]
A Bipartisan Push for Sentencing Reform Unites President Obama and the Koch Brothers, but Many Are Still Waiting Behind Bars The gleaming black granite tower where conservative billionaire Charles Koch oversees an empire of multinational corporations is 1,500 miles and worlds away from the California prison cell of Weldon Angelos. But Angelos sits at the intersection of an unusual alliance between the industrialist and President Obama - longtime political nemeses. Their cooperation illustrates the depth of a bipartisan effort to reduce the nation's [continues 2998 words]
Either Americans are the most evil people on Earth or there's something terribly wrong with their criminal-justice system. We hope it's the latter. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States has nearly 25 percent of the world's prisoners. The U.S. locks people up at a rate nearly five times the world's average. Since 1980, its inmate population has more that quadrupled. How to explain? First, there's the sad reality that U.S. crime rates, despite their general decline in recent years, are still far higher than those of other advanced democracies - stoked, perhaps, by the nation's sharp social disparities and the easy access to firearms. Then there's the sad reality that jails and prisons, rather than hospitals, are being used to warehouse the mentally ill. An estimated 16 percent of the nation's inmate population suffers a mental disorder. [continues 471 words]
Both Parties Are Right to Call for Sentencing Reform The U.S. prison gulag is the bitter fruit of the grotesquely expensive war on drugs and decades of reflexive but counterproductive tough-on-crime policies. The truth is this: Our federal and state prisons incarcerate people at a higher rate than all other major nations - well beyond rates in Russia and China and those under regimes widely regarded as backward and oppressive. With 5 percent of the world's population, the United States holds about a quarter of the global prison population. [continues 434 words]
There is a destination where you're about five times more likely to be incarcerated than the rest of the world. It's got only 4 percent of the planet's population but claims more than 20 percent of the world's population behind bars. It's not Syria, and it's not Cuba. That place is the United States of America. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that the number of prisoners in the United States has increased more than seven times during this author's almost 50 years. Two million people in America live behind the walls. America imprisons at an astounding rate of 716 of every 100,000 people. The Prison Policy Initiative ranks Florida 10th in the U.S., imprisoning people at a rate of 891 people per 100,000. Florida's "lock 'em up" rate ranks well above authoritarian regimes such as Cuba, Rwanda and the Russian Federation. In 1970, the Florida Department of Corrections imprisoned just 8,793. Thirty years later, the number has multiplied more than 11 times to greater than 100,000 men and women in state prisons. [continues 236 words]
Re: "Drug legalization: Learn from Portugal" [Opinion, July 26]: As a former drug warrior, I offer my support to the Register for their editorial on Portugal's drug laws. The American War on Drugs is slowly coming to a close, and we must take notes from those who have trekked this path before. Portugal decriminalized possession of small amounts of all drugs more than 10 years ago, prioritizing harm reduction and addiction treatment, and the positive results are nothing short of astounding. [continues 158 words]
The United States does not have a justice system. If we define a justice system as a system designed for the production of justice, then it seems obvious that term cannot reasonably be applied to a system that countenances the mass incarceration by race and class of hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders. Any system that vacuums in one out of every three African-American males while letting a banker who launders money for terrorist-connected organizations, Mexican drug cartels and Russian mobsters off with a fine is not a justice system. [continues 523 words]
Evan Horowitz gives a good overview of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses ("Mass. drug sentencing revisited," Capital, July 17), but the argument that the current heroin crisis could be a reason to keep harsh penalties for drug trafficking misses the mark. In Massachusetts, drug trafficking laws kick in for the sale of very small quantities of hard drugs - as little as 18 grams, or 2 to 3 tablespoons. As a result, sentencing laws aimed at kingpins ensnare addicts, and judges are prevented from sending them to treatment. Instead, prison is the only outcome allowed. [continues 153 words]
There Is Bipartisan Interest in Congress, but Advocates for Sentencing Changes May Be Disappointed. WASHINGTON - A bipartisan push to reduce the number of low-level drug offenders in prison is gaining momentum in Congress, but proposals may disappoint advocates hoping to slash the mandatory minimum sentences that are seen as chiefly responsible for overcrowding in the nation's detention facilities. House Speaker John A. Boehner( R- Ohio) surprised advocates Thursday by saying he strongly supported holding a vote on a prison reform bill similar to one sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, a moderate Republican from Wisconsin. The measure has been languishing in the House Judiciary Committee. [continues 605 words]
Commuting sentences isn't about the law. It's about mercy, writes reform advocate Dennis Cauchon. President Obama's historic visit to a federal prison on Thursday shows that his head and his heart are in the right place on criminal justice reform. As he said a few days earlier, "Mass incarceration makes our country worse off, and we need to do something about it." The president overhauled the clemency process in April 2014 to much fanfare. He said that he wanted more worthy applications on his desk and that he was ready to act aggressively to approve them. But it's hard to square that rhetoric, andthe compassion Obama demonstrated by meeting with prisoners this past week, with Monday's miserly announcement that he'd granted clemency to 46 people. [continues 1336 words]
In words and in deeds, Barack Obama is ramping up his crusade for criminal justice reform, a worthy undertaking for the final two years of his presidency. In a rousing speech to the NAACP on Tuesday and in more measured tones at the White House on Wednesday, Obama made the case that we need a more just criminal justice system as an issue of civil rights and racial equality. Thursday, he became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison - a penitentiary in Oklahoma - to spotlight the subject. Earlier this week, he commuted the sentences of 46 federal drug offenders, doubling the number during his presidency and surpassing the total of his four predecessors combined. [continues 407 words]
Fort Worth, Texas - The Case of Sharanda Jones Is Not Unusual in a Country Where You Can't Be Too Tough on Drug Crime. Barack Obama Has Other Ideas, Though. Prisoner 33177-077 struggles to describe the moment in 1999 when a federal judge sentenced her to life in prison after her conviction on a single cocaine offence. She was a first-time, non-violent offender. "I was numb," says Sharanda Jones at the Carswell women's prison in Fort Worth, Texas. "I was thinking about my baby. I thought it can't be real life in prison." [continues 1424 words]
The U.S. criminal-justice system needs close scrutiny, as President Obama said Tuesday in a speech to the NAACP convention in Philadelphia, to determine how much of how it operates actually creates injustice. Thankfully, a reform plan - one that starts with a retreat from flawed mandatory minimum sentences that warehouse prisoners who often are little threat to society appears to have a solid chance of winning support in Congress and resulting in real change. Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, Rand Paul, R-Tenn., Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., have all questioned rigid "three-strikes-and-you're-out" policies that have resulted in America locking up a much higher percentage of its people than any First World nation. So have two of the nation's heavyweight campaign donors the Koch brothers - as the president noted Tuesday. [continues 392 words]
Drug Offenders' Terms Reduced As Part of Effort to Amend Justice System President Obama on Monday commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders, more than double the number of commutations he granted earlier this year, as part of his effort to reform the criminal justice system. In a Facebook video posted Monday, the president said the 46 prisoners had served sentences disproportionate to their crimes. "These men and women were not hardened criminals, but the overwhelming majority had been sentenced to at least 20 years," he said. "I believe that at its heart, America is a nation of second chances. And I believe these folks deserve their second chance." He noted that in his letters to them, he urged that they make different choices now that their sentences had been commuted. [continues 918 words]
Move Is Part of Drive to Reform Criminal Justice WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders Monday, doubling the total number of clemencies he has granted as the administration seeks to correct what many see as the wrongs inflicted by mandatory-minimum prison sentences. They included Norman O'Neal Brown, a Prince George's County man who was sentenced to life in prison in 1993 on charges of possessing and distributing crack cocaine. The latest clemencies brought Obama's total commutations to the largest figure of any president since Lyndon B. Johnson. [continues 885 words]
President Pushes for Changes to Make Justice System Fairer Washington (AP) - Calling America "a nation of second chances," President Barack Obama cut the prison sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders Monday in what the White House hopes will be just one prong of a broader push to make the criminal justice system fairer while saving the government money. Fourteen of those whose sentences were commuted had been sent to prison for life and the vast majority for at least 20 years, the president said in a video released by the White House, adding that "their punishments didn't fit the crime." [continues 496 words]
WASHINGTON - President Obama commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders Monday, doubling the number of clemencies he has granted as the administration seeks to correct what many see as the wrongs inflicted by mandatory minimum prison sentences. The latest clemencies brought Obama's total commutations to 89, the largest number since President Johnson's 226. Decades after the tough-on-crime era of the 1980s and 1990s, the Obama administration is hoping to combine the president's commutation powers with Justice Department reforms and support from sympathetic Republicans in Congress to change sentencing policies that have had a disproportionate effect on African Americans and Latinos. [continues 880 words]
Young African-Americans Lost in Cycle of Poverty, Violence and Drugs THE NUMBERS that drive Philadelphia prison-reform advocate Patricia Vickers on her mission aren't the big abstract ones. Not 36,000, the shocking recent estimate of young black men in Philadelphia either behind bars or dead before their time. Not 1,500,000, the national tally of what academics now call "missing black men." No, the digits that motivate the 66-yearold mom have been pounded with a sharp needle, black ink jabbed into the soft flesh under Vickers' right bicep - 20 digits that mark the birthdays of her four kids as well as her own. [continues 2093 words]
WASHINGTON - Sometime in the next few weeks, aides expect President Obama to issue orders freeing dozens of federal prisoners locked up on nonviolent drug offenses. With the stroke of his pen, he will probably commute more sentences at one time than any president has in nearly half a century. The expansive use of his clemency power is part of a broader effort by Mr. Obama to correct what he sees as the excesses of the past, when politicians eager to be tough on crime threw away the key even for minor criminals. With many Republicans and Democrats now agreeing that the nation went too far, Mr. Obama holds the power to unlock that prison door, especially for young African-American and Hispanic men disproportionately affected. [continues 1614 words]
Re "Repeal mandatory minimum drug sentences" (Editorial, June 7): How many innocent people plead guilty to avoid the chance of a long mandatory sentence? No matter how weak the evidence, a small chance of a long unjust sentence can coerce a guilty plea. All protections of a fair trial are useless if prosecutors can coerce defendants to give them up. Mandatory sentences greatly undermine confidence in the justice system. Ilya Shlyakhter Cambridge [end]
The June 7 front-page article "Against his better judgment," about mandatory minimum sentencing in drug cases, quoted U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett telling a defendant, "My hands are tied on your sentence. I'm sorry." The article failed to note that there is an actor in the system whose hands aren't tied: the federal prosecutor. Federal prosecutors have the discretion to pursue lesser charges in these cases but choose not to. Why would the prosecutor agree only to a plea bargain that carried a 10-year mandatory minimum for a defendant? How does he or she respond to the judge's criticism? Why was such a decision made in light of the Justice Department's August 2013 directive to assistant U.S. attorneys not to pursue charges bearing mandatory minimums against first-time nonviolent offenders? An examination of this case or sentencing in general should not overlook the immense power prosecutors have to alleviate the injustice of mandatory minimum sentencing or to perpetuate it. Brian A. Dupre, Washington [end]
In One American Meth Corridor, a Federal Judge Comes Face to Face With the Reality of Congressionally Mandated Sentencing They filtered into the courtroom and waited for the arrival of the judge, anxious to hear what he would decide. The defendant's family knelt in the gallery to pray for a lenient sentence. A lawyer paced the entryway and rehearsed his final argument. The defendant reached into the pocket of his orange jumpsuit and pulled out a crumpled note he had written to the judge the night before: "Please, you have all the power," it read. "Just try and be merciful." [continues 3220 words]
Clergy Sees Laws As Harsh, Involving Race, Fair Housing The marijuana decriminalization bill that could soon go to Gov. Bruce Rauner's desk has an array of supporters, including civil libertarians, prosecutors and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Its supporters also include clergy. Protestant pastors and Jewish rabbis are lobbying lawmakers in Illinois and in states across the Northeast as part of a push toward legalization, which they see as a moral cause encompassing issues such as race, fair housing and employment. [continues 751 words]
Ulbricht Was Convicted of Running Underground Online Drug Bazaar Ross Ulbricht, the convicted founder of Silk Road, has been sentenced to life in prison for running the underground online drug bazaar, signaling the government's seriousness in combating Internet crimes. The punishment is a heavy price to pay for the 31-year-old, who had pleaded with the judge to spare him his old age and "leave a small light at the end of the tunnel." The sentence by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest followed an emotional three-hour hearing. Judge Forrest said she spent more than 100 hours grappling with the sentence, calling the decision "very, very difficult." [continues 848 words]
This is in response to the editorial "Malloy didn't call anyone racist but drug enforcement is" (May 18). Regarding the comments made by Gov. Dannel Malloy that upset Republican legislators: The drug war has been waged in a racist manner since its inception. The Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914 was preceded by a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment. Opium was identified with Chinese laborers, marijuana with Mexicans, and cocaine with African-Americans. Racial profiling continues to be the norm, despite similar rates of drug use for minorities and whites. Support for the drug war would end overnight if whites were incarcerated for drugs at the same rate as minorities. [continues 117 words]
Aging Population of Inmates Serving Long Sentences Takes a Toll on Budgets COLEMAN PRISON, Fla. - Twenty-one years into his nearly 50-year sentence, the graying man steps inside his stark cell in the largest federal prison complex in America. He wears special medical boots because of a foot condition that makes walking feel as if he's "stepping on a needle." He has undergone tests for a suspected heart condition and sometimes experiences vertigo. "I get dizzy sometimes when I'm walking," says the 63-year-old inmate, Bruce Harrison. "One time, I just couldn't get up." [continues 958 words]
Aging Population of Inmates Serving Long Sentences Takes a Toll on Budgets COLEMAN PRISON, Fla. - Twenty-one years into his nearly 50-year sentence, the graying man steps inside his stark cell in the largest federal prison complex in America. He wears special medical boots because of a foot condition that makes walking feel as if he's "stepping on a needle." He has undergone tests for a suspected heart condition and sometimes experiences vertigo. "I get dizzy sometimes when I'm walking," says the 63-year-old inmate, Bruce Harrison. "One time, I just couldn't get up." [continues 955 words]
Human, Financial Toll High As Tens of Thousands Linger INSIDE COLEMAN PRISON, Fla. - Twenty-one years into his nearly 50-year sentence, the graying man steps inside his stark cell in the largest federal prison complex in America. He wears special medical boots because of a foot condition that makes walking feel as if he's "stepping on a needle." He has undergone tests for a suspected heart condition and sometimes experiences vertigo. "I get dizzy sometimes when I'm walking," says the 63-year-old inmate, Bruce Harrison. "One time, I just couldn't get up." [continues 2635 words]
In a Rare Moment of Detente, Democrats and Republicans Have Both Admitted That America's War on Drugs and the Subsequent Tough-On-Crime Policies Have Failed. How Did We Get Here? Politicians from across the divided political spectrum now agree tough policies on drugs and mass incarceration have failed, blighting inner-city communities. On the last Tuesday of April they buried Freddie Gray in a white coffin with gold trim at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Baltimore. Gray was 25 when he died, his neck broken and his voice box crushed, in police custody after he had been arrested for making eye contact with a police officer. [continues 1918 words]
When Ronald Hammond appeared in a Baltimore courtroom on a charge of possessing 5.9 grams of marijuana, the judge scoffed at the case. District Judge Askew Gatewood told the prosecutor that "5.9 grams won't roll you a decent joint," according to a transcript of the 2012 case. "Why would I want to spend taxpayers' money putting his little raggedy butt in jail - feeding him, clothing him, cable TV, Internet, prayer, medical expense, clothing - on $5 worth of weed?" [continues 1343 words]
Author Scott Thomas Anderson's new book explores America's appetite for incarceration Journalist Scott Thomas Anderson has stuck his trickiest deadline yet. The author, hard-news evangelist and former SN&R colleague spent the past three years researching and writing his second nonfiction book, The Cutting Four-Piece: Crime and Tragedy in an Era of Prison Overcrowding, a tough work of long-form journalism that pries open the iron gates on America's penitentiary binge. The book is his second stab at crime-centric literary journalism, following his book Shadow People: How Meth-Driven Crime is Eating at the Heart of Rural America. Both books are bruising examinations of a society failing both victims and addicts. But his latest also contains a love letter to a profession in flux, particularly small-town reporters who out-hustled their big-market colleagues in illustrating how California's prison realignment experiment warped their communities. Over pints of hard cider and IPA, Anderson explains the origins of our prison crisis, why he hopes his work resonates with convicts and what he learned from SN&R's most notorious writer. [continues 719 words]
I've been coming to Trenton-the state capital-for 20 years to protest and to utilize state services, but I never lived in Trenton. Hopefully that will be changing ASAP: I'm looking for a little spot to call home. I've been living at my mom's house for the last year and a half since returning from California. But this past year I've mingled, smoked, and schmoozed with hundreds of Trentonians. I don't know what it is about TRENTON, but I'm loving it to the point I'm attempting to live and open a business here. [continues 1256 words]
With State Prisons Over Capacity, Some Are Calling for Reversal of Harsh Law Kevin Ott drew his first strike when he was arrested for a small bag of methamphetamine in his pocket in 1993. A year later, authorities caught the self-described country boy from Okemah with marijuana plants growing at his home. That strike got him 15 months in prison. Still in his early 30's, Ott took strike three in 1996 when police found 3 1/2 ounces of meth in his home, enough for prosecutors to charge him with trafficking. His punishment: life without parole. [continues 3439 words]
NM Is No. 2 in the U.S. for Overdoses From Heroin, Opioids At the age of 53, barely literate and morbidly obese, Crystal Staggs hardly cut the figure of a drug dealer as she drove her white 13-year-old BMW around Albuquerque. But in June 2012, Staggs, who has a host of medical problems, was cashing in on her access to prescription Oxycodone, selling 245 of the 30-milligram pills for $4,000 to a man she had recently met through a friend. [continues 1201 words]
The San Francisco Police Department worked hard to arrest Cassie Roberts. San Francisco cops along with Drug Enforcement Administration agents staked out Roberts and several dozen other Tenderloin denizens for weeks, recording and observing video of them from rooftops and parked cars. After a hand-to-hand-drug sale between Roberts and a confidential informant wearing a hidden body camera was caught on camera, a U.S. attorney went to a grand jury with Roberts' name. An indictment was issued, an arrest warrant was signed by a federal judge, and later, Roberts was apprehended and charged in federal court. [continues 821 words]
The seeds of a health care revolution in drug and alcohol treatment are just starting to germinate. The outcome is far from certain, but, with billions on the table, an epic battle is percolating. Let's start with the convoluted back story. A hundred-plus years ago, drug and alcohol problems were generally viewed as moral weakness and/or personality defect confined to working class Caucasians or ethnic minorities. Alcohol and drug use was legal in America. Then, the temperance movement produced alcohol Prohibition in 1920. [continues 694 words]
In commuting the sentences of 22 federal drug offenders Tuesday, President Obama has begun to take the unfettered power of executive clemency embedded in the Constitution to the place where it belongs. "I've been a cynic on the Obama administration for a while," University of St. Thomas School of Law Professor Mark Osler told me, but with these commutations, which doubled the president's total, "it's hard for me to be cynical about what's happening today." Finally, the administration is demonstrating how pardon power should be used, with, as Osler put it, "the most powerful person in the world freeing the least powerful person in the world." [continues 441 words]
