From Dominic Holden at Slog:
Tracking Down Those Unicorns
Last week White House appointee John Walters claimed on C-SPAN that finding people in jail for “first-time nonviolent possession of marijuana... is like finding a unicorn... because it doesn’t exist...” (I)t didn’t take me long to find credible people willing to vouch for the existence of first-time, non-violent marijuana offenders — excuse me, unicorns...
The gentle herb giveth:
(I)t's ok if you can’t afford private counsel. The often abused Public Defenders are among the very best lawyers anywhere. Their standards are high; their training is excellent. The sometimes higher paid members of the “private bar” often call on them for advice. So that’s a good place to start. You have to judge lawyers, their abilities, and, perhaps more importantly, their interest in you and your marijuana case for yourself...
The gentle herb taketh away:
Few people can afford to go the distance with the Justice Department, and are conducted to their confinement by the Judas Goats of the public defender service, pawns of the prosecutors, understaffed, and paid on the basis of supposed merit by the judges, most of whom are also ex-prosecutors...
I've never heard "Judas Goats" applied to our kind before, particularly not to purebred AFPD's. I'll add the term to my list of public pretender curses.
From the Olympian:
Court: Can't arrest all in car based on drug smell
The scent of marijuana wafting from a car isn't enough reason for police to arrest everyone inside, but officers can still follow their noses to search a vehicle, Washington's Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The unanimous decision overturns a nearly 30-year-old legal precedent in Washington and again recognizes the state constitution's robust privacy protections, which in some cases are stronger than federal privacy rights.
Officers still may search a car based solely on the smell of drugs, the court said, and justices indicated that a drug smell might be stronger evidence supporting arrest if there were only one person in a vehicle. But when it comes to multiple people in a car, the scent of pot alone isn't a cloud of probable cause that subjects everyone in the car to arrest, because police must have stronger evidence that an individual may have broken the law...
For a limited time, the opinion in State v. Grande is here.
Update 7/19/08: like, the Wall Street Journal ripped me off, maaaan! (via Simple Justice)
From KOMO:
Pot-hunting deputies found after night in forest
Ten sheriff's deputies who got stranded in the woods of southwest Washington while busting a marijuana-growing operation were rescued Sunday...
From Slog:
Myth #1: “The term ‘420’ originated from some police code for ‘pot smoking in progress...’”
Myth #2: "420 is only celebrated by hippies who crawl into moldy basements and wallow in their own filth while passing around greasy chillums..."
From Knit and the City:
So, what was I doing in Key West - well, to the shame of the conference organizers, I was not smoking weed. Out of all the public defenders to send to NORML's national conference, our office sends the non-toker...
I won't say it - but, let me just put it this way. I was the only public defender at the conference. Everyone else was a member of the private bar - and man were they high on themselves. Crack after crack after crack about the dumb pd, the ineffective pd, the pd this, yadda yadda . . . enough already.
Nice sunsets though. Pictures too.
From a mom involved in a child protection case, courtesy of MySpace:
Without weed I become manic ... If I'm manic and NOT able to think ...I can't even save myself let alone my kids. Hence the need for weed. Understand?
So peeps need to stop telling me they don't understand how I can ask for money for weed but not for money to get a lawyer to get my kids back... I'm asking for $50 bucks here for smoke. Not the couple grand it takes to get a real lawyer... So I have no choice but to go to a public defender.
I understand: $50 here, $50 there, months gone by and kids still gone, and who'll be to blame? The public pretender, of course. Sad.
From the Seattle Weekly:
Jack-Pot - Federal law lets the cops pocket anything seized in a drug bust—cars, boats, cash—and use it to fund the war on drugs. But when Jane Gerth found a half-million dollars in the Okanogan woods, the rules got more complicated.
Jane Gerth was taking a walk along the woody edge of a Highway 97 turnout near her home south of Oroville... A black and gold bag poking up in the weeds was something that instantly caught her eye.
Gerth, then 52, stepped through the weeds and tugged on the backpack. She couldn't lift it. She untied some straps, and then unzipped the main compartment. She stood back in amazement as bundles of $20 bills oozed out.
There she stood, alone with her dogs and, clearly, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now what?
I seem to remember that the movie version starred Billy Bob Thornton.
This weekend we went to Tokeland, WA.
It was beautimous, and strangely, not a sign of hemp did I see.
Update 08/29/05: "Dude, We missed you at OlyHempFest! Did you know that hemp can be used to make houses, and fuel, and... uh, rope...?"
My local community radio station carries an interesting and unabashedly slanted show "dedicated to exposing the fraud, misdirection and wastefulness of the 'war on drugs.'"
While I'm a bit of a fellow traveller on this issue, for historical reasons and others, I'm always more than a bit skeptical of any production that carries the word "Truth" in its title: Pravda, for example, or Swiftboat Veterans for Truth.
That said, I give you "Narkomanskaya pradva set' (Наркоманская правда сеть), or, the Drug Truth Network.
Today, for instance, a Canadian marijuana seed seller compared efforts to extradite him to the U.S. to the pogroms under the Tsar.
There was also a pretty unappetizing review by some recent guests of the accomodations at the Houston (Harris County) jail, which I think they compared to the Gulag.
For all that, the show did have was one reliable bit of advice:
"If you're going to commit crimes, using alcohol or drugs will make it easier for you to get caught."
The shows are archived on the website if you wanted to listen for yourself.
Obscure bonus link:
"The Russian Drug Addict's Dictionary" (in Russian only, unfortunately)
I had a fine trip today over to the part of the state where Napoleon Dynamite is a documentary.
Crossing the desert gave me time to re-think yesterday's topic: there will be p.d. clients who view their experience in jail or in the system as a form of witness, political or otherwise. Most p.d.s' default switches are stuck in the "maximise freedom / extract client from the belly of the beast" position, I imagine. Once in a while we may be called upon by a client to shift gears, to engage more fully with the client who desires to make a principled stand in a dingy out-of the-way courtroom, or whose idea of fighting the power includes fighting assigned counsel too.
I've done at least one of what could be termed an overtly political trial. (yes, I know the discussion about how so many p.d. cases are truly political - no, I'm not getting into it here). My client wanted a trial, not probation, and that's what she got. Trial. And not probation. No, we didn't win, and my client lost years of her freedom, but she made her choice, and got to make her case in the face of Idaho law and Idaho jurors. Plead or go to trial, it's always the client's call.
Trials against the odds aren't just for anarchists or hemp promoters. I also thought about a misdemeanor trial I watched years ago when I was a p.d. in Boise. Some local Operation Rescue members, about 27 of them I think, were on trial for trespassing, for blocking the entrance to Planned Parenthood. They were being defended by an attorney I knew who shared his clients' worldview, but didn't have much experience in criminal defense. The state's witnesses from Planned Parenthood couldn't positively identify the trespassers by individual. A proper objection or half-time motion from an amoral, experienced criminal trial lawyer could have sprung those defendants, but then the jury might not have heard the lawyer's impassioned speech before they duly convicted each of his clients.
Oh well, any defendant in a jury trial can feel "like a Mouseketeer trapped in an endless anything-can-happen day" at the best of times. Maybe the idea for the activist client should be to retain two lawyers, one on the client's comfort level, the other who knows what to do inside a courtroom.
Alert readers will remember the comments of one of my Idaho colleagues, explaining how the job is becoming less fun as more of our clients make the switch from marijuana to meth. He made the point in a public hearing to his county commissioners. As part of his request to add money for a new half-time attorney position to next year's public defender contract, Doug told his funders,
Methamphetamine users tend to feel invincible and be much less cooperative and more agitated, often making their defense more difficult and time consuming.
That's the story here in Double Drip too. Some days I miss the junkies of my PD youth: they were the mellow fellows, relaxed, some times charming even, with a remarkable insight into their particular back-monkey and never posing much more of a threat to the community than walking out of buildings with other people's merchandise. Stoners, too, were pleasant company, and I never had a marijuana client who injured anybody while under the influence of the gentle herb.
Meth cases are harder because meth clients are harder. Their lives are harder, the monkey on their backs has a harder grip. People on meth deserve a touch of diplomacy and a lot more confidence-building. Even if your client's a beginning tweaker, nobody just waltzes into jail and announces, "I'm your lawyer, trust me." Meth is corrosive to attorney-client relationships as much as to clients. It's a nasty, nasty drug, and it's hell on poor people, no matter what my pro-legalization friends say.
Ah, but the later 80's - that was a simpler time. We practiced out of a windowless, now-demolished office below street level and hopped in our cars like the Battle of Britain to take the fight out to Traffic Court. Mark Stewart and Tim Hansen were our mentors, I shared an office with Doreen, a ratty green couch and a picture of Nelson Mandela, Eric's office sprouted mushrooms, and the cops were just starting to bring in customers caught holding something called crank. So, the clients got called cranksters. You know the rest: it's 2004, and my drug possessions, my burgs and forgeries, my DV's, my child protections, almost all my cases are shot through with the toxic off-white substance, as are most of my hapless clients.
The twist to this is that, with the best of intentions, the NLADA got ahold of the local paper's article on Doug's testimony and request for more funding for p.d.'s, perma-linked it here, and puffed up the original headline from
Public defenders say they need help
to
ID: Indigent Defense Crisis Looming in Idaho; Public Defenders Say They Need Help .
God bless the NLADA! The thought is appreciated, but hold the CARE packages: we're no more or less beleagured than the rest of you in PD-landia. I hope the commissioners in Doug's counties come through with the dollars. In the meantime, if you could spare a few potheads, we'd be much obliged.
Here's what's harshing the mellow of today's busy rural public defenders:
"(Doug) Whipple said the prevalence of methamphetamine has changed the complexion of cases as well. 'With marijuana cases, clients were much more mellow and cooperative,' Whipple said. 'With people on meth, it's a whole different ball game.' Methamphetamine users tend to feel invincible and be much less cooperative and more agitated, Whipple said, often making their defense more difficult and time consuming."
For the next week, link will be here.
