Subject: civil rights, hassle, High Times I rarely read this group so forgive me if this h
Subject: civil rights, hassle, High Times
I rarely read this group so forgive me if this has been
discussed before. I read this in the local paper and thought
you might find it interesting.
Karen Lynn White "Seeker and ye shall find her"
Medical Science
Indiana University ARPA: seeker@copper.ucs.indiana.edu
Bloomington, IN 47405 UUCP: {pyramid,ihnp4,pur-ee,rutgers}!iuvax!seeker
----------------
'High Times' they aren't at hassled Worm's Way Inc.
You're driving down South Ind. 446 near Lake Monroe and you
decide to stop at Worm's Way gardening store to buy some tomato
seeds.
You grab a couple of packets of seeds and toss a dollar bill on
the counter.
The man behind the counter says he can't sell you anything,
however, not even tomato seeds, until you read an information
sheet provided by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The paper states that Worm's Way has been indicted in U.S.
District Court and is subject to forfeiture to the United States.
"All customers making a purchase from Worm's Way, Inc. will be
required to provide his/her name, resident address if different
from mailing address, telephone number, and driver's license
number with state of issuance and date of expiration or
comparable identification if a valid driver's license is not
held," it says.
The paper goes on to say "Worm's Way, Inc. shall refuse to sell
any equipment or supplies to any customer who solicits advice
concerning the cultivation of marijuana or refuses to provide the
information requested below." It then provides big, bold lines
for customers to write their name, address and other information.
Worm's Way owner Martin Heydt doesn't deny his recent indictment
on eight federal counts relating to either the conspiracy to, or
the actual aiding and abetting of the cultivation of marijuana
plants. He gestures toward the gardening equipment, fertilizers
and other inventory in his store and says, "Virtually everything
in here could be used for illegal purposes if a person wanted to.
"But whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?" he
asked. "We've not been proven guilty of anything. We've not had
our day in court."
When federal officials served their initial indictment of Worm's
Way last summer, they searched Heydt's business and nearby home
from top to bottom, going through his 10-year-old daughter's room
and even his wife's jewelry box. They found no marijuana, no
paraphernalia, not even a marijuana seed.
"It's Big Brother at his biggest," Heydt said. "It's pretty
chilling if the government can come in here and do this.
Basically, they're trying to run me out of business by putting
fear into people who shop here."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Donna Eide counters that the government
is neither trying to intimidate Heydt nor put him out of
business.
"It certainly is not intended as a harassment," she said by
telephone from her Indianapolis office. "It's the result of a
balancing test. The government could have actually seized the
business. We decided to take the less restrictive avenue."
Eide wouldn't say the Heydt's case is a "War on Drugs"
prosecution any more than any other drug-related case, though she
acknowledged she has never handled a case in which an indicted
citizen's business has been required to question its own
customers. "We want to ensure that the business is run in a
legal manner," she said.
Heydt disagrees, of course. "They're trying to set an example.
They're trying to make a national commitment out of this and use
us to further their cause."
Apparently, the government got on the trail of Worm's Way's
because it advertised its organic and hydroponic gardening
equipment in publications including High Times and Sinsemilla
Tips. Both magazines focus on marijuana culture, cultivation and
the like.
The case against Worm's Way alleges that several people bought
Worms's Way equipment and grew marijuana after seeing
advertisements in the so-called marijuana advocacy magazines.
Heydt argues, "If somebody buys a gun from Don's Guns and they go
out and rob a ban, is Don liable for that?"
Other counts allege that Heydt and employee Harold Bryant either
directly advised customers about growing marijuana or "weed," or
used code language, such as "tomato plants."
The most serious of the charges, conspiring to aid and abet the
cultivation of more than 1,000 marijuana plants, carries a
sentence of 10 years to life. Six other charges carry 5- to 40-
year prison terms each.
Though Heydt's case is scheduled for trial on March 25, he said
that the government has refused to comply with his attorney's
motions for discovery of evidence - a standard trial procedure.
He also claims the government has engaged in various forms of
harassment, including the confiscation of his computer equipment.
"I said 'Copy the hard drive. You don't need the hardware.' Well,
we finally got one computer back after eight months. But they're
keeping the other as evidence, and for what reason I have no
idea."
"If I'm guilty of anything, it's bad judgment," the Worm's Way
owner said. "If I had it to do over, I sure wouldn't ha e
advertised in High Times magazine. If anyone had come to me and
said, 'You could be in serious trouble if you advertise there,'
I'd have pulled my ads, I don't need this."
But whatever the case, I think the point here is that this isn't
even about marijuana. It's about rights and due process.
They're judging us guilty before we've had the chance to argue
our innocence. and they're making it difficult to even do
business before we've had our day in court."
============================================================================
The Final Confiscation?
The following is taken from Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression
(Washington, D.C. : U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947):
TOP SECRET
4 copies, first copy
Economic Aspect of the Action Reinhardt,
gathered together in the SS Economic and Administrative Head
Office -- Special Task "G", which I am in charge of and of
which I have not been relieved:
The entire Action Reinhardt is divided into four
spheres:
A. The expulsion itself.
B. The employment of labour.
C. The exploitation of property.
D. Seizure of hidden goods and landed property.
[Poster's note: I'm skipping a lot of details concerning A.,B.,
and C. for the sake of file space. Here follows a very general
totaling of assets obtained under D.]
Assets delivered from Action Reinhardt
The following assets from the Action "Reinhardt" were
delivered to the SS Economic and Administrative Head Office,
Berlin, for further transmission to the Reichsbank or to the
Reich Ministry of Economics:
a. Reichmark sums totaling 53,013,133.51
b Currency in Bank notes from all the
principal countries in the world (half a
million dollars being particularly to be
noted) to a total value of 1,452,904.65
c. Foreign currency in gold coins to a
total value of 843,802.75
d. Precious metals (about 1.800 kg. of
gold and about 10.000 kg. of silver in
bars) to a total value of 5,353,943.00
e. Other valuables such as jewelry,
watches, spectacles, etc. (the number of
watches being particularly worthy of note
-- about 16,000 in working order and
about 51,000 requiring repair; they have
been placed at the disposal of the
troops) 26,089,800.00
f. About 1,000 wagons of textiles to a
total value of 13,294,400.00
Total ..................................RM 100,047,983.91
[sgd.] Globocnik
SS Gruppenfueher and Lieut. General of Police
------------------- end of excerpt -----------------------------
Now that the people accept confiscation, and now that the
government says there are 2.2 million hopeless once-a-week or
better cocaine addicts with property to confiscate, think of the
profits that can be made. And they'll get a neat tattoo out of
it too!
============================================================================
This is an anonymous, forwarded post. Please edit the
attribution line accordingly. Thank you.
------------------begin forwarded message--------------------
San Francisco Examiner 08/30/90
Warren Hinckle
OPERATION SNOWCAP :
A drug war fiasco
"The biggest, costliest, most dangerous failure of
American policy since Vietnam."
-- Former DEA superagent Michael
Levine on the war on drugs
In march 1987, the Drug Enforcement Agency unleashed
its secret weapon to halt the avalanche of cocaine
cascading into the United States: Operation Snowcap.
Snowcap put armed American DEA agents into the field
with military units of the cocaine plantation nations
of Bolivia and Peru to destroy the drug at its roots.
The goal, routinely hypothesized in press conferences
called by DEA executives, was to reduce the amount of
cocaine entering the country by 50 percent within three
years.
In 1989, the much-ballyhooed Operation Snowcap became a
linchpin of the Andean strategy of President Bush's
expansive war on drugs, which twined DEA Snowcap
interdiction raids with greatly increased involvement -
- and escalated U.S. funding -- of the military of
Columbia, Peru and Bolivia.
On Aug. 14, the House Committee on Government
Operations of the 101st Congress released a report on
Operation Snowcap that sent shivers through the high
timbers of the DEA. After three field trips to observe
Snowcap in action, the committee concluded that the DEA
adventure in the Andes was flaky :
"Despite the courageous efforts of agents conducting
operations in the jungles, (cocaine) trafficking
organizations have neither been disrupted nor
dismantled as a result of DEA paramilitary activities
in Peru and Bolivia. Three and a half years and nearly
$200 million later, Operation Snowcap is failing to
achieve its goals," said Rep. Bob Wise (D-W.Va.).
Snowcap has not achieved any significant reduction in
the cocaine flow, put DEA agents at risk in dangerous
paramilitary situations and afforded many opportunities
for the U.S. taxpayer to be once again ripped off. The
study said that Bolivian military commanders used
trucks and boats provided by the U.S. war on drugs for
"commercial purposes," including renting them for the
delivery of cocaine-processing chemicals.
The congressional study found that things had not
improved since a critical 1989 audit by the State
Department's Office of Inspector General of U.S. anti-
narcotics programs in Peru and Bolivia concluded that,
under Snowcap: "Coca production in those countries has
increased every year and less than 1 percent of the
illicit drugs have been seized."
The DEA's bragging of mammoth reductions in cocaine
cultivation has assumed the status of the ludicrous.
"DEA officials have been unable to state whether or not
there has been _any_ decrease in the amount of cocaine
coming into the U.S. since Operation Snowcap began,"
the congressional report said (_italics_ added).
Snowcap comes across as a prototype for a drug wars
version of "M*A*S*H" In one telling chapter, the
committee described the hilarious situation of DEA
agents on raids regularly running narcotics roadblocks
manned by Bolivian troops because they know if they
stop and identify themselves the soldiers will
telegraph their intentions to the cocaine traffickers.
The Bolivian troops of course shot at the anti-drug
squad of DEA agents and Bolivian soldiers who crashed
their checkpoint. This makes for exhilarating duty. The
chapter includes: "To date no casualties have been
reported, however, a knowledgeable DEA agent believes
that it is only a matter of time before this situation
will result in United States or (Bolivian) fatalities."
The drug wars' version of friendly fire.
So widespread and open is the profitable military
cooperation with the cocaine lords of Colombia, Peru
and Bolivia that instances of what Bush's drug warriors
call the "host country" military shooting at DEA anti-
drug raiders are common. On June 22, 1989, during a
Snowcap raid on Santa Ana, a drug-trafficking center
know as the Medellin of Bolivia, the Bolivian navy
fired on U.S.-provided anti-drug helicopters. In Peru,
soldiers shoot at passing DEA copters.
The DEA's show biz approach to Snowcap -- all rockets,
no explosions -- is evident in the Nov. 8, 1989,
Snowcap raid on the town of San Ramon in eastern
Bolivia to seize a half-dozen cocaine-processing
facilities and capture a Bolivian narcotics "kingpin."
The kingpin escaped, but the U.S. Embassy in La Paz
called the raid - involving 30 DEA agents and 300
Bolivian military, "the largest encounter-narcotics
enforcement operation in recent times" in
"embassyspeak" - an "overall success." Congressional
investigators found that only a small amount of cocaine
from the supposedly huge processing center was seized
and no cocaine base was found. The 20 Bolivians
arrested all were out of jail and free within 10 days.
The San Ramon raid fizzled out because the Bolivian
military had tipped off the cocaine processors 12 hours
before, giving them sufficient comfort to clear out of
town with their equipment and supplies of cocaine
hydrochloride. The final insult to U.S. drug wars
bravado came from the Bolivian air force, which charged
the U.S. Embassy commercial hourly rates for the use of
their C-130s in the raid.
The committee reported that "senior U.S. officials knew
(in advance) that the raid had been compromised" but
proceeded with the raid and declared it a public
relations victory.
Despite the Bush administration's costly reliance on
the military of Peru, Bolivia and Columbia to win the
war on drugs, the committee found "no indication that
the military establishment in each country is
interested in combating the narcotics trade."
Operation Snowcap-as-M*A*S*H is nothing new to former
DEA undercover agent Michael Levine, who put more than
3,000 drug dealers in the hoosegow but has concluded
that the war on drugs is basically "a fraud." In his
book "Deep Cover," an insider's account of the drug
wars published earlier this year, Levine recounts a
meeting of the "suits" - his affectionate name for DEA
leaden-pants executives - in Washington, D.C., in 1988
where the DEA brass admitted that Snowcap was a shuck.
Levine had told his bosses of an undercover meeting
with Bolivian cocaine barons who laughed at Snowcap's
pretensions and told him of cocaine runways in Bolivia
large enough for a 747 to land. Levine was told angrily
that "Snowcap is our answer" to the cocaine plague by
officials who in the same breath admitted that: "DEA
did not have aircraft with 'near enough range' to reach
the cocaine lab, and that the corruption problem was
'insurmountable.' That the Bolivian cocaine traffickers
were warned three days before every recon flight and
that every recon flight and that every cocaine seizure
Snowcap did make was 'a gift, to keep us happy.'"
"The drug war," wrote the embittered ex-supernarc,
"like the Vietnam War, is being fought with no
intention of winning."
Research assistance provided by Bob Callahan.
-----------------end forwarded message---------------------------
--
paul hager hagerp@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
"I would give the Devil benefit of the law for my own safety's sake."
--from _A_Man_for_All_Seasons_ by Robert Bolt
============================================================================
From: dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Dave Gross)
Subject: Forwarded Anonymous Posting (lots of neat stuff)
This is an anonymous posting from someone who doesn't have posting privs. yet
and contacted me to try to get this posted. Please change attributions to
reflect this. Thanks.
----------------------begin forwarded message-------
A Mount Everest of Time
Convicts' numb disbelief at new drug-sentencing laws
By A Federal Prisoner
note : This essay is by a convicted bank robber and prisoner at
the Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix who has been a
frequent contributor to Sunday Punch. Under a recent court ruling
now being appealed, federal prisoners may not have their writings
published in the news media under their bylines. Therefore, in an
attempt to protect the convict-writer from further disciplinary
action, The Chronicle has chosen to publish this essay
anonymously.
The big prison story these days is the story of Patrick Grady and
Gordon Brownlee and Kevin Sweeney and Curtis Bristow. They all
made serious mistakes, and they will all have decades to brood
over those mistakes.
Grady 42, has been a close acquaintance of mine over the past two
years. He's a Vietnam veteran who wears a mustache because a Viet
Cong fragment grenade slightly disfigured his upper lip and part
of his cheek.
He was also wounded in the leg by gunfire and decorated
repeatedly for valor in combat. Along with his wounds in Vietnam,
Grady picked up a drug habit. When he returned to his hometown
Seattle, he began selling drugs to support it.
In 1988, he was convicted of numerous counts of conspiracy to
possess and sell cocaine. It was his first felony charge. A
federal judge in Tacoma, Wash., sentenced him to 36 years in
prison. He will have to serve 31 years before he can be released.
Grady has a wife and a 4-year-old daughter and professes shock
over the severity of his sentence. "I can't believe that the
system of government that I put my life on the line for could do
this to me," he says.
"I may be naive, but I've always thought a person could recover
from one mistake. I grew up on the old cliche about a 'three-time
loser.' Now I've made a mistake, and my wife will be 70 when I
get out and my daughter will be 34. That's the end of my family,
I can't ask them to wait that long."
Grady doesn't say much about his sentence, but I can see in his
eyes a form of terror and despair akin to what was probably there
when he saw a fragment grenade land nearby. A few days ago, he
asked me a question.
"How is it that I get 36 years in prison for selling cocaine when
people who rape a woman, bash her head in with a rusty pipe and
leave her for dead only get 10 years? Am I supposed to be four
times more evil than them?"
The bitterness and numb disbelief of Patrick Grady are mirrored
in the minds of thousands of men and women in the federal
prisons, and the numbers are increasing at a alarming rate.
In 1989, there were 44,891 criminal cases filed in federal
courts, according to a U.S. judicial report. That was almost
triple the 15,135 cases filed in 1980. Those numbers, more than
anything, represent the escalation of the drug war in the past
decade. More than one-fourth of all criminal cases filed in
district courts are drug cases, according to the same report.
But there's a darker side to those statistics because many people
sentenced under new federal drug laws aren't ever getting out of
prison. Some who will get out may be so old that they won't
remember coming in.
Even prisons such as the one here at Phoenix that are designed
for medium-security prisoners are experiencing a large influx of
men who have been sentenced to nightmarish terms of
incarceration.
Since 1987, federal sentences have been non-parolable. the
maximum good time that can be earned is 54 days a year. Thus, a
person with a 20-year sentence will serve about 17 years if he or
she is a model prisoner. It used to be that a 20-year sentence
would result in seven to 12 years of "real time."
Many people outside applaud the big numbers and harsh sentences.
But those I see in here who are weighed down by the years are not
gunslinging stereotypes; they are real, hurting people and they
have families outside whose lives, like their own, are
devastated. The people who support those new sentences should at
least look at their effect on the people I meet in here.
A former college professor from the Bay Area whom I met here at
Phoenix got life without parole for possession of seven kilos of
cocaine. A Sacramento man who is 45 years old received 27 years
for conspiring to manufacture methamphetamines. They both have
wives and children who hope they will get out someday.
Now that most of the power is in the hands of prosecutors, long
sentences are no longer oddities - they have become the norm.
Gordon Brownlee, a San Francisco native who lives down the tier
from me tells about the pressure a San Francisco prosecutor put
on him.
"I was arrested in 1989 with one gram over five kilos of cocaine
and charged with possession with intent to sell. Had it been
under five kilos, the sentence range would have been five to 40
years. But the extra gram made it 10 years to life," he says.
"The only criminal record I had was a charge in 1982 for trying
to buy marijuana from an FBI agent. The prosecutor told me that
if I would become an informer I could get off lightly, but if I
didn't he would use the 'prior' to enhance my sentence to 20
years to life."
Brownlee is 42 years old and has a wife and baby daughter. On
July 28, 1989, after a plea of guilty, he was sentenced to 20
years in prison. His release date is 2006.
Few people in here, including those who were apprehended for drug
violations, believe they should get a slap on the wrist or be let
off lightly. But convicts believe that this country has entered
an era of criminal justice when the punishment for drug offenses
heavily outweighs the crimes, and the result in human terms is
disastrous.
Bob Gomez, an elderly man who helps fellow convicts with legal
work, contends that an oversight by Congress created most of the
problem.
"A few years ago," he says, "Congress designed some harsh new
sentences for drug offenses. Those terms were drafted with the
thought in mind that offenders could be paroled in one-third or
do the entire sentence in two-thirds of the total amount.
"When the new non-parolable sentences were approved, they simply
grafted the big numbers onto the new sentencing code. No
politician had the temerity to jump up and say: 'Hey, we're
giving these guys too much time.'"
The problem goes beyond the sheer number of years people get
under the new drug laws. Enforcement agents outside, spurred on
by the public's drug hysteria, at times seem to be coercing crime
as much as they are fighting it.
Kevin Sweeney, 33, and Curtis Bristow, 32, are both former
residents of San Diego. They received 20 and 14 years
respectively for conspiracy to make methamphetamines. Their cases
raise troubling questions about the "war" against drugs.
Sweeney and Bristow were jailed along with 100 other defendants
arrested in a four-year DEA sting operation in San Diego. One
defendant was sentenced to 30 years. But the police operation
itself had some ugly aspects.
A chemical store had been set up in 1985 by a man who was working
with the DEA, according to a DEA agent. He began selling
chemicals and glassware to would-be methamphetamine makers and
turning their names and addresses over to the DEA, the agent
testified. In the ensuing four years, according to trial
testimony, he sold hundreds of pounds of ephedrine over the
counter. Ephedrine is the key ingredient in illicit meth. It's
illegal to sell in the state of California.
One of his customers was a 15-year-old boy. At the time, a DEA
agent was also directly involved in the store's operation.
At the culmination of the sting operation in 1989, the store
owner testified that he cleared $900,000 in one year from the
sale of ephedrine that the DEA allowed him to keep in addition to
money they paid him.
He also testified that he taught novices how to make the drug
using the chemicals and glassware he sold them. A rough estimate
of the amount of drugs he put on the street under the auspices of
the DEA is mind-boggling.
Attorneys have appealed the charges as "outrageous government
conduct," but given the political nature of drugs today, no one
holds out much hope for relief.
Bristow, who worked for the government as a sandblaster, had no
criminal record other than traffic violations. He was sentenced
to 163 months for possession of the chemicals he bought from the
chemical store.
Sweeney, with one prior felony on his record, got 240 months in
federal prison.
It's easy for a judge to say "20 years" or "30 years." It takes
only a few seconds to declare. It's also easy for the person in
the street to say: "Well , this criminal has harmed society and
should be locked up for a long time."
The public is unable to imagine what the added time does to a
convict and what it does to his family.
Two years is a lot of time. Twenty or 30 years is a Mount Everest
of time, and very few can climb it. And what happens to them on
the way up makes one not want to be around if and when they
return.
The first thing a convict feels when he receives and
inconceivably long sentence is shock. The shock wears off after
about two years, when all his appeals have been denied. He then
enters a period of self-hatred because of what he's done to
himself and his family.
If he survives that emotion - and some don't - he begins to swim
the rapids of rage, frustration and alienation. When he passes
through the rapids, he finds himself in the calm waters of
impotence, futility and resignation. It's not a life one can look
forward to living. The future is totally devoid of hope, and
people without any hope are dangerous - either to themselves or
others.
These long-timers will also have to serve their time in
increasingly overcrowded and violent prisons. As I write this,
authorities are building a pre-fab unit next door to my cellblock
that will hod 300 new convicts. Some two-man cells here already
hold three people. There are 1,200 of us in a prison that was
designed and built for 500.
A more sinister phenomenon is the growing length of the chemical
pill line daily at the prison hospital, the place where convicts
go for daily doses of tranquilizers and psychotropic drugs such
as Prolixin and Haldol. The need for these medications is a sign
of the turmoil inside these long-timers.
Indeed, it is ironic that men who are spending decades
incarcerated for illicit drug activities are now doped up by
government doctors to help them bear the agony of their
sentences.
Two years ago, the chemical pill line was very short. Now it
snakes along for a good distance. Society is creating a class of
men with nothing else to lose but their minds.
--------------------------------
I have a question about drug use upon the body that I hope
someone can (with sources) answer:
A friend of mine had a teacher in high school that had two down
syndrome children. The doctors told her that her and her husband
had taken too many drugs in their life time. That their drug
usage had permanently "altered" their genes, that they would
never be able to have normal children.
My question is : what are the sources disproving a connection
between drug use and the chromosomes, and if it is sufficiently
disproved, what kind of legal response can the teacher bring upon
the doctor.
-----------------------------
On the Willie Nelsen thread ... from the Examiner.
Willie Nelson says he doesn't care much for politicians, but he's
all for Kentucky's Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gatewood
Galbraith because Galbraith is all for marijuana.
Galbraith wants to legalize marijuana and even use it for food and
fuel.
"I'm for the war on drugs," Nelson said Sunday at a Democratic
Party rally, in Frankfort, to the consternation of more traditional
Democrats.
"I'm not in favor of the war on flowers and herbs. Marijuana is an
herb and a flower," the country singer said. "God put it here. What
gives them the right to say God's wrong?"
Nelson and Galbraith say they are regular marijuana smokers.
--------------------end forwarded article------------------
************************* dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU ***************************
Dover, Del. (AP) -- Drug traffickers in Delaware, which outlawed public
floggings less than 30 years ago, could be stripped to the waist and given
40 lashes if legislation introduced in the state Senate becomes law.
============================================================================
From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Subject: Why drug testing is dangerous.
-----
Underlying the push for universal drug testing is the idea that
it is all right to deny people employment, access to schools, job
training, driver licenses, and favors and permissions from the
government because they have broken a law. On the face of it,
this seems a reasonable assumption. It reflects laws in many
states that prohibit felons from voting, owning weapons, or
otherwise participating in activies and benefits available to the
law-abiding members of society.
The problem with this line of thought is that felons have been
convicted in court. Our legal system has scrupulous rules --
rules that are vital to our liberty -- about determining a
suspect's guilt *before* she or he is deprived of normal social
relations. Universal drug testing is an attempt to bypass these
rules and the protection they afford.
This is easy to see if one looks at other kinds of illegalities.
Theft is against the law, and unlike drug use, there is not doubt
about the damage it does others. Suppose that in order to get a
driver's license, fill out an employment application, apply to a
school, buy a weapon, etc, one had to yield one's bank records
for examination of any suspicious deposits, which one would then
have to explain. If one could not explain the legal source of
income for a suspicious deposit, then one would be turned down on
the grounds that one had thieved or otherwise acquired money
illegally.
How is this different from a drug exam? One might complain that
the DPS, prospective employer, school dean, and gun salesman have
no business knowing how much one earns or how -- just as those
opposed to drug testing complain that these have no business
knowing the list of prescription drugs one takes. One might
complain that this is an invasion of privacy -- but any more than
collecting one's piss? One might complain that if the federal
government were to require this, then it would be a violation of
the 4th amendment. If true, then so is drug testing.
We are moving from a system where one is innocent until proven
guilty to where one must prove one's innocence to live in
society. The Constitutional principles against this are being
bypassed by the government pressuring secondary institutions
(state departments, employers, schools, etc) to implement the
program. But it is still the government in control. If this
trend is successful, the closing of our society will be as
certain as if it were federal officers demanding one's piss (bank
records, official papers, etc) instead of employers, school
deans, and other semi-private officials.
Russell
============================================================================
From: turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin)
Subject: Re: Innocent Until Proven Guilty
Summary: Innocence until guilt proven is part of due process.
Civil RICO is a travesty of American legal tradition.
-----
In article <32068@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, pierce@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce):
> She continues with the part that confuses me, "The governent seizure takes
> place through civil proceedings where the burden is on the defendant to
> prove his or her innocence, unlike the 'innocent until proven guilty'
> due process guarantee of criminal proceedings."
>
> In reading previous net postings I had received the impression that in
> the US there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to be "innocent until
> proven guilty". If there is, in fact, such a right, then why doesn't one
> possess this right in a civil trial? ...
The fifth amendment says that the federal government may not
deprive citizens of life, liberty, or property without "due
process" of law. The fourteenth amendment extends this
protection to all citizens equally, and from state and local
governments as well as the federal government. It all sounds
good, but what is due process?
The answer is that our legal system rests in part on English
common law, and it is from that tradition that our courts decide
what is or is not due process. The Constitution does not spell
out in detail all the rules that apply to criminal proceedings;
instead the framers relied on what had already been spelled out
in the English tradition. Thus, "due process" includes an
adversarial system, an impartial judge, and the burden of the
state to prove the guilt of the accused. (For contrast, one can
examine jurisprudence in countries whose legal system derives
from the Napoleonic code.)
In the English tradition, the lower courts do two things: try
accused criminals and resolve disputes between citizens. A
burden of proof makes eminent sense when imposed on the power of
the state to punish citizens. But if you and your neighbor are
arguing over the boundary between your lands, this no longer
applies. Who would have the burden of proof, and why? Instead,
civil law allows resolution based on the "preponderance of
evidence".
In the war on drugs, the government has found the burdens of
criminal prosecution too great, and so it has tried to escape
them by using civil law to punish. Instead of proving a person
guilty of dealing drugs and levying a fine, it passes a law that
"defines" the state as legitimate owner of all property used in
drug deals, siezes the property it suspects, and then makes the
aggrieved citizen sue to get her or his property back. Since
both possession of property and the suspicion of the law
enforcement agents are evidence in civil court, the citizen is
already at an evidential deficit which must be overcome to
reclaim their property.
This is one of the greatest legal atrocities in the history of
American law. If allowed to continue, it holds the possibility
that criminal law -- and our traditional rights in that area --
will become largely obsolete, because the state will be able to
effectively control citizens solely through civil procedures.
Currently, the state has bypassed the need to prove guilt or even
indict citizens before imposing arbitrary fines. The state could
similarly bypass safeguards on citizen liberty by instituting a
national service and defining as the qualified draftees everyone
involved in the drug trade. "Trial?? We don't need no stinkin'
trial. You haven't been *jailed*, after all, just impressed into
national service. If you think you were selected wrongly, just
sue us!"
Contrary to the drug warriors who support this terrible change, I
believe there is considerable difference between a bank robber's
swag being returned to the bank, since both the bank and robber
are private parties, and a drug dealer's property being siezed by
the state, which unlike the bank, gets to define ownership in any
fashion it pleases. To allow this kind of seizure obscures
irredeemiably the distinction between criminal punishment and
civil dispute.
> ... Are there any other rights that a person no longer has if
> undergoing a civil trial, such as the right not to incriminate
> oneself?
Yes, but I do not have a good grasp of which. Hopefully, some of
the legal eagles in this newsgroup will provide the answer. You
will see that allowing the state to prosecute crime through civil
procedure is a huge step backwards in civil rights.
Russell
============================================================================
From: rab@well.sf.ca.us (Bob Bickford)
Subject: Bill would declare martial law, suspend Constitution, for Drug War
Keywords: drug war constitution concentration camp
-------------------------
EMERGENCY -- ACT!
by Tomas Estrada-Palma
and Larry Monaghan
A new bill, HR 4079, co-sponsored by Representative Newt Gingrich and
Senator Phil Gramm, would open the way for American concentration camps
to be built, and thereafter permit the state to round up suspected drug
users so they can be forced to work without compensation for the state.
"The Drug and Crime Emergency Act" drips with patriotism as Gingrich
tries to vaguely connect the freedom movement in eastern Europe with
America falling deeper and deeper into "the slavery of drug addiction".
The bill proposes suspending the Constitution for five years so millions
of illegal drug users can be held by the state in concentration camps.
All internees will be forced to work and if anyone is caught with drugs
in the camps they will have one year added to their sentence each time --
with no right to appeal.
HR 4079 calls for declaration of a five year national state of emergency
--in essence, martial law. It proposes reopening the concentration camps
of WWII, using active and inactive military bases as prisons, and a new
privately owned prison system as well. To aid in accomplishing this, the
4th Amendment, the 8th Amendment, and habeas corpus are either superseded,
redefined, or disallowed. A provision has been built in to allow the
government to purchase goods manufactured by prison slave labor. To ensure
the duration of this labor force, all previous maximum sentences would be
changed to minimum sentences. New mandatory sentences would be applied,
and probation, parole, and suspension of sentences revoked.
To provide an even greater pool to draw from, mandatory drug testing of
just about everyone above junior high school level has been included. The
resolution carefully avoids addressing the funding necessary.
Even after 30 press releases were sent out to all the national and local
news outlets by Maryland Libertarian Party members, there has been
practically no mention of the bill in the media. The state evidently is
hoping to sweep this bill into law right under our noses while we are all
preoccupied with other events taking place around the world. Surprisingly,
the response from libertarians as well as mainstream folks has been one
of complacency.
Everyone needs to make phone calls and write letters. Direct your
correspondence to the media and your representatives as well as Gingrich
and Gramm. If they don't think you care about this bill becoming law --
it will! Act now or cry behind the barbwire later.
---------------
reproduced from the July 1990 Libertarian Party NEWS
--
Robert Bickford {apple,pacbell,hplabs,ucbvax}!well!rab
rab@well.sf.ca.us /-------------------------------------\
| Don't Blame Me: I Voted Libertarian |
\-------------------------------------/
============================================================================
Annual drug deaths:
tobacco: 395,000
alcohol: 125,000
'legal' drugs: 38,000
illegal drug
overdoses: 5,200
marijuana: 0.
Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what
is our government protecting us from in the drug war?
E-Mail Fredric L. Rice / The Skeptic Tank