The Guatemalan rainforest: Lush jungle, Mayan ruins and narco jets full of cocaine – Of Course! – kra
Of Course! The War on Drugs is a whopping disaster, and should end. We all know it, but lawmakers are idiots, who pander to the many forces contributing to their campaigns to avoid needed reforms. For every 1 person arrested, 29 benefit financially, yet most of them are helping neither society nor the individual arrested.
READ How the War on Drugs has Destroyed Justice. I remember when the system worked well; justice nearly always was the result. Today it is a total train wreck – perhaps the most vivid manifestation is that we are imprisoning hundreds of innocent people every year. This is WHY it is a train wreck!
Excerpts from the Article:
The makeshift airstrips are sliced into the jungle, clearings carved out of the oaks and palms wide enough to land jets full of cocaine.
The planes arrive in the middle of the night, their lights off, guided by drones, unsteady under the weight of the drugs. They descend over Mayan ruins, over camps of jaguar researchers and ornithologists, over illegal settlers and ranchers.
The cat-and-mouse game between the United States and the leaders of Latin America’s drug trade has shifted to this wild stretch of Guatemala, one of the most inhospitable landscapes in the Western Hemisphere. Jets can carry more than $100 million worth of cocaine, to be ferried swiftly out of the jungle, through Mexico and on to the United States.
Over the 50-year U.S. drug war, one truth has prevailed: When one trafficking route closes, another emerges to take its place.
Not long ago, cartels moved more drugs in submarines and fishing boats through the Pacific Ocean. U.S. Coast Guard vessels narrowed that route. Cocaine-filled jets once flew mainly to Mexico and Honduras, until those countries developed aerial interdiction teams.
But Guatemala’s northern border remains a no man’s land, a wildlife reserve that has become a criminal playground. This newest route runs through the largest rainforest in Central America, an expanse the size of Delaware that was once the cradle of the Mayan civilization.
Guatemalan security forces found 50 abandoned narco jets in the country last year. Dozens more landed and then flew away, authorities say. Ninety percent of the cocaine now consumed in the United States transits through Guatemala.
The coronavirus pandemic has had a mixed impact on drug trafficking in the Americas. The increased difficulty of moving the product across locked-down borders has crashed the price of coca leaf in South America. But cocaine seizures in the United States have been largely flat.
In this undefended stretch of Guatemala, authorities here say, the planes have kept coming. A slick twin turboprop was found in a clearing in the jungle on June 21. The burned remains of a jet, apparently set on fire by traffickers after the drugs were removed, were found June 19. Another crashed south of the Laguna del Tigre National Park in April, scattering thousands of pounds of cocaine in tightly wrapped bricks throughout the brush.
In recent months, the park has been ravaged by more than a dozen large-scale fires, many set by drug traffickers who are burning tracts of jungle to build “illicit landing strips for the transportation of drugs,” President Alejandro Giammattei said in an address to the nation this spring. A team of firefighters was captured in the park this month by a group of armed men.
But even as Guatemalan officials acknowledge the transformation of this protected land into a drug trafficking corridor, its security forces say they are outmatched by the far better resourced cartels. On a flight over Laguna del Tigre earlier this year, a Washington Post journalist counted more than a dozen landing strips across the park — and several jets sitting on them.
“We are talking about an industry that has enough money to abandon million-dollar planes in the jungle,” Guatemalan Army Col. Juan de la Paz said. “Their resources are infinite, and we are just trying to keep up.”
Many of the jets come from Venezuela. Between 2012 and 2017, cocaine flows through the country rose by 57 percent, according to the U.S. government’s consolidated counterdrug database; the Justice Department this year charged President Nicolás Maduro with narcoterrorism. Still more cocaine comes from Colombia and Ecuador.
“Colombian and Venezuelan drug trafficking organizations often partner with Mexican cartels for significant cocaine shipments,” said Michael Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. “The cocaine shipment is most often destined for Guatemala.”
The Pentagon sent Navy and Coast Guard ships to the Caribbean this year in its largest ever deployment to confront the drug trade there. But Attorney General William P. Barr has acknowledged: “Our pressure has led to an attempt for an air route out of Central America.” That air route has proved more difficult to block. Enforcement in Guatemala’s remote corners is almost nonexistent and access to Mexico’s porous southern border is unobstructed.
The 15,000-square-mile department of Petén is protected by a brigade of 1,200 soldiers with no air support, de La Paz said. By the time soldiers bushwhack through the jungle, the planes have departed or been destroyed.
“It’s an impossible task,” said one soldier, who was not authorized to speak to journalists. “We hear the planes fly in and we just say, ‘There goes another one.’ ”
The troops climbed the stairs and found 1,700 individually wrapped kilos — roughly 3,700 pounds — of pure cocaine. It would be worth roughly $160 million in the United States.
About once a week, soldiers and rangers said, they heard drones fly over their jungle base. Then, often in the middle of the night, the planes arrived.
Some appeared to be almost new. Guatemalan officials say pilots are paid up to $500,000 per flight — a wage that appeared to take the risk into account. De la Paz said Guatemalan forces last year recovered the bodies of 10 pilots killed in crashes. One crashed into the getaway vehicle waiting next to the airstrip.
Judge Karla Hernández was held hostage for three days in 2018. She’s been assigned two bodyguards.
In 2018, Hernández sentenced Lester Ovidio Gallegos Mayorga to four years in prison for illegal cattle grazing in Laguna del Tigre. The next year, police charged him with transporting 70 kilos of cocaine through the park in a pickup.
One ranch in Laguna del Tigre was long registered to Waldemar Lorenzana, a well-known recipient of government contracts, even as he ran one of the country’s largest cocaine trafficking organizations. Extradited to the United States in 2014, he was eventually convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced this year to 23 years in federal prison.
Dozens of airstrips identified by the Guatemalan military remain active, fueling suspicions of government complicity or participation in the trafficking. In some cases, the military has refused to destroy the airstrips until it receives dynamite from the Guatemalan Justice Department.
“Guatemalan forces disabled 16 suspected clandestine airfields in 2019, though many returned to operational use within days or weeks,” the State Department reported this year. The DEA has found that air traffic controllers have been bought off by drug traffickers.
“It’s a combination of official corruption and a lack of institutional capacity,” said Stephen McFarland, a former U.S. ambassador to Guatemala. “There’s money to do more, but there’s not a political will.”
Two millennia before Laguna del Tigre came under the control of drug traffickers, it was the cradle of the Mayan civilization, home to a road network that linked hundreds of Mayan cities in an ancient jungle metropolis. “This was New York City at the time of Jesus Christ,” said Roan McNab, the Guatemala program director for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, as he flew over the jungle. Below him was the Mirador basin, where archaeologists are uncovering signs of one of the world’s most sophisticated pre-modern civilizations. A pyramid swelled in the jungle, larger than the Egyptian pyramid of Giza.
Those rangers have focused on preserving one 143,000-acre tract of the park, about a sixth of its total area, because they don’t have the resources to protect more. Criminal organizations have razed much of the land outside that area. In the last year, McNab said, man-made fires have swept through tracts roughly twice the size of the District of Columbia.
“Demand for cocaine in the Northern Hemisphere leaves a trail of wreckage across the Americas,” McNab said. “The ecological devastation of Laguna del Tigre is just one example. Farther south, other Mesoamerican protected areas face similar challenges.”
At nearby El Mirador, a towering Mayan ruin deep in the jungle, archaeologist Richard Hansen has hired 28 private armed guards to fend off traffickers. Much of his funding comes from private donors, including actors Mel Gibson and Morgan Freeman. Sens. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and James E. Risch (R-Idaho) introduced a bill last year that would devote $72 million to fund “archaeological research, law enforcement, and sustainable tourism” around the ruins.
Hansen envisions trains full of tourists winding through the jungle to the remote site.
“We have to outsmart the narcos,” he said.
The drug trade has had a devastating environmental impact, a phenomenon Science Magazine dubbed “narco-deforestation.” Laguna del Tigre has lost more than a fifth of its tree cover since 2000.
Rarely have U.S.-funded conservationists worked so dangerously close to some of the world’s most powerful traffickers.
The unarmed park rangers in Laguna del Tigre come face to face with them regularly. A group of 30 men arrived on horseback in one of the rangers’ camps last month and ordered them to stop patrols, McNab said. Rangers have been kidnapped and beaten. Last week, armed men carjacked a park ranger’s government vehicle and left it torched in the brush.
At least 12,000 people live illegally in the park. Many were displaced during the country’s long civil war. Others came in search of land, rare in a country where vast amounts of property are controlled by a small political and economic elite.
But many end up working the illegal cattle farms of wealthy landowners, many of them linked to the drug trade. Informal settlements inside the park have grown into small towns, with schools and clinics and convenience stores. Many are close to illicit airstrips. But residents insist that they are poor farmhands, not traffickers.
McNab thinks often about the Mayan empire. It collapsed in part because it overused the forest’s resources. But after that collapse, the forest slowly returned to life. “Maybe that’s what happens here again,” McNab said. “The jungle returns to life after mankind is forced to leave.”
Colorado: New Law Expands Governor’s Authority to Pardon Those with Marijuana Convictions
Certainly more states should follow this lead! In most states the Clemency process is costly and time consuming for any offense, hence unjust. I specialize in Applications for Clemency nationwide.
Excerpts from the Article:
Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation into law on Tuesday providing the Governor’s Office with expanded clemency powers for those with marijuana convictions on their records.
Under the new law, the office of the Governor may “grant pardons to a class of defendants who were convicted of the possession of up to two ounces of marijuana without an application and without seeking the comment of the District Attorney and judges for those cases.”
While the Governor’s office already possessed the authority to issue pardons in certain circumstances, this measure expands those powers so that the Governor can do so unilaterally for persons with minor marijuana convictions.
The Governor can begin unilaterally issuing pardons in 90 days.
Legislation (HB 1266) previously enacted by the state legislature in 2017 permits those with misdemeanor cannabis convictions to petition the courts to have their records sealed.
Other provisions in the legislation (House Bill 1424) remove the prohibition on those with past felony convictions for marijuana-related activities from seeking industry licenses, among other changes to facilitate greater social equity within the retail cannabis space.
“My office in the Marijuana Enforcement Division is making equity a priority in engaging stakeholders around this topic because, for too long, the consequences of not having equity across too many areas of society – cannabis being one – are simply too severe,” Gov. Polis said.
The Whole Story:
Colorado: New Law Expands Governor’s Authority to Pardon Those with Marijuana Convictions
‘No-Knock Raids’ an Increasing Danger to Public Safety – They are a product of our idiotic war on drugs- kra
They are a product of our idiotic war on drugs. It is a valuable tool only in very, very rare cases: dangerous, volatile targets. Scores of innocent people have been injured or killed in no knock raids.
Excerpts from the Article:
Julian Betton was in his home minding his own business when the police crashed through his front door. The cops entered without knocking or identifying themselves as law enforcement, and Betton reacted as any citizen would to masked individuals shouting threats and brandishing weapons: He confronted the armed intruders with a gun of his own. The police shot him nine times, paralyzing him from the waist down and severely damaging his internal organs.
Betton was a victim of an aggressive form of warrant service called “dynamic entry,” commonly known as “no-knock” warrants. Police officers argue that no-knock warrants are necessary to ensure their safety and to prevent suspects from destroying evidence. Yet there is no evidence to suggest that serving warrants this way is safer for either law enforcement or citizens. In fact, when police masquerade as violent home invaders, they often provoke an armed response that results in serious injury, and even death in some cases, for everyone involved.
With no-knock raids, police departments have taken a page out of the military’s playbook. In recent years, the U.S. Department of Defense’s 1033 program has promoted the militarization of law enforcement by providing cops with surplus military equipment. Adopting military tactics better suited to the battlefield than to neighborhoods radically changes the relationship between police and the citizens they have sworn to protect and serve. Citizens are seen as enemy combatants in an urban war zone. During dynamic entry, the individual inside his home becomes the intruder rather than the invading police and, from the perspective of law enforcement, does not have the right to defend himself.
Fortunately, the Castle Doctrine, based on the Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful searches and seizures, gives citizens the right to defend their home from invaders, even when they happen to be cops.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals agrees. Betton filed suit against the officers who shot him. Members of the task force testified that they followed the search warrant’s specifications to knock and announce. However, Betton’s home security footage contradicted their claims. Betton won his suit, but David Belue, one of the Myrtle Beach Police Department officers involved, appealed. Belue’s attorney argued in court that the illegal entry was immaterial, and the only relevant matter in the case was Belue’s perception of how the incident unfolded. In effect, Belue’s lawyer claimed that citizens do not have the right to protect themselves from home invaders. The Fourth Circuit rejected this absurd claim and ruled in Betton’s favor.
Police officers attempt to change legal standards by claiming that simply being a cop gives them the right to act with impunity. So far, the courts have resisted tipping the scales in favor of law enforcement over citizens in such cases. For instance, in the highly publicized “wrong place, wrong time” murder of Botham Jean by Dallas patrol officer Amber Guyger in 2018, the court rejected her claim that because she was a cop, Guyger could accidentally enter Jean’s apartment and shoot him when he ignored her orders to raise his hands.
When the police are not held to the same legal standards as citizens, they no longer enforce the law but lawlessness.
Unfortunately, this double standard comes at the expense of public safety and the lives of citizens.
SCOTUS: Jury Verdicts Must Be Unanimous to Convict on Criminal Charges, Overruling Apodaca
Given the imbalance between the prosecutor’s resources {in many cases unlimited} and , almost always, the defense’s {often, an ill prepared P D who knows nothing about the case until the day of trial!}, this is a great decision.
Excerpts from the Article:
The Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”) held that in jury trials of criminal cases the verdict must be unanimous to convict the defendant, overruling Apodaca v. Oregon, 406 U.S. 404 (1972).
Evangelisto Ramos was convicted of a serious crime in Louisiana by a jury vote of 10 to 2. He was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Ramos challenged his conviction on the ground that a conviction by a non-unanimous jury violates his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial.
Justice Gorsuch, writing for the Court, observed that “[i]n 48 States and federal court, a single juror’s vote to acquit is enough to prevent a conviction. But not in Louisiana. Along with Oregon, Louisiana has long punished people based on 10-to-2 verdicts like the one here.” But at one time, all States required unanimous verdicts.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed….” The right to a jury trial in criminal cases is also enshrined in Article III, section 2, of the U.S. Constitution. But that venerated document does not define what is meant by “jury trial.” Did those words convey, at the time James Madison penned the Sixth Amendment, that a jury must reach a unanimous verdict in order to convict?
The requirement of juror unanimity emerged in England in the 1300s and was soon accepted as a vital right protected by the common law. J. Thayer, Evidence at Common Law 86-90 (1898) (“Thayer”). No one could be found guilty of a serious crime unless “the truth of every accusation … should … be confirmed by the unanimous suffrage of twelve of his equals and neighbors, indifferently chosen, and superior to all suspicion.” 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 343 (1769). A “verdict, taken from eleven, was no verdict” at all. Thayer.
The Constitutions of Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Virginia explicitly required unanimous jury verdicts to convict. All States, even without an explicit provision in their respective Constitutions, required unanimity as an essential feature of a jury trial. Commonwealth v. Fells, 36 Va. 613 (1838). By the time the Sixth Amendment was written and ratified by the States in 1791, unanimous verdicts had been required for about 400 years.
And the right to unanimous verdicts continued in State courts in the years after ratification. In 1824, Nathan Dane reported as fact, in 6 N. Dane, Digest of American Law, ch. LXXXII, Art. 2, § 1, p. 226, that the U.S. Constitution required unanimity in criminal jury trials for serious offenses. And Justice Story explained that “unanimity in the verdict of the jury is indispensable.” 2 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States § 777, p. 248 (1833).
SCOTUS had also repeatedly affirmed that the Sixth Amendment requires unanimity. A defendant enjoys a “constitutional right to demand that his liberty should not be taken from him except by the joint action of the court and the unanimous verdict of twelve persons.” Thompson v. Utah, 170 U.S. 343 (1898). “Unanimity in jury verdicts is required where the Sixth and Seventh Amendments apply.” Andres v. United States, 333 U.S. 740 (1948). In the 120-plus years since the Thompson decision, SCOTUS “has commented on the Sixth Amendment’s unanimity requirement no fewer than 13 times….” (See opinion for citations of those 13 cases.)
SCOTUS has explained that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial is “fundamental to the American scheme of justice” and incorporated against the States under the Fourteenth Amendment. Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145 (1968). And the provisions of the Bill of Rights that have been incorporated under the Fourteenth Amendment apply with the same force and effect to the courts of the States as to the federal courts. Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1 (1964). In light of this weight of history and precedent, how did Ramos come to be convicted by a Louisiana jury’s 10-to-2 verdict?
Racists, racial supremacists, racism, and racial supremacy – the people and the ideology espoused by them – continue to impact the U.S. justice system. Often it is done in ignorance and done implicitly. But in Louisiana, non-unanimous verdicts for serious crimes were first explicitly endorsed for racist reasons at a constitutional convention in 1898. One committee chairman said the avowed purpose of the convention was to “establish the supremacy of the white race.” Official Journal of the Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Louisiana 374 (H. Hearsey ed. 1898). The men at that convention produced a document that included many of the insidious Jim Crow laws: the poll tax, the combined literacy and property ownership test, and clauses that exempted White residents from these laws.
SCOTUS explicitly held in the instant case that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial includes the right to a unanimous verdict and is applicable to the States via the Fourteenth Amendment, overruling Apodaca.
Accordingly, the Court reversed Ramos’ conviction. See: Ramos v. Louisiana, 206 L. Ed. 2d 583 (2020).
How Stupid Can Lawmakers Get? Pot as Medicine – kra
LinkedIn is not allowing me to post – I have tried several times with various links!- links about cannabis gummies, but google it. There are oodles of varieties and even instruction on how to make them.
PAIN RELIEF FROM MOTHER NATURE.
One more reminder of how stupid and fucked up most of our drug laws are. And please don’t give me that shit about it being a “gateway drug”; there is no evidence of that.
Man Serving 18 Years On Marijuana Charges Just Died In Federal Prison COVID-19 Outbreak Fidel Torres, 62, qualified for a sentencing reduction, but the same judge who sentenced him denied it based on infractions while in custody.
I see that it was a judge in Texas on this case. I shall never, ever, ever forget that my first year out of law school – ’73 or ’74 – I read a case where a judge in Texas had sentenced a man to 40 years in prison for possession of less than an ounce of pot, and on appeal the U S Supreme Court ruled that it was not “cruel and unusual punishment”! I was horrified.
My good friend and great lawyer, Steve Hampton, (302) 678-1265) – one of few with the guts and the know-how to sue prison officials and their “health care” providers – sent me this article, to which I replied: A double whammy of injustice. In legal parlance: fucked up! One of the most idiotic and harmful laws still on the books is the federal criminalization of pot, ranking it just as “dangerous” as heroin!
- Nobody should be in prison for pot. It is legal now in many areas of the U S.The medical use of cannabis is legalized (with a doctor’s recommendation) in 33 states, four out of five permanently inhabited U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia.[2] Fourteen other states have laws that limit THC content, for the purpose of allowing access to products that are rich in cannabidiol (CBD), a non-psychoactive component of cannabis.[2] Although cannabis remains a Schedule I drug, the Rohrabacher–Farr amendment prohibits federal prosecution of individuals complying with state medical cannabis laws.[3]The recreational use of cannabis is legalized in 11 states (Alaska, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington), the District of Columbia, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam. Another 16 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands have decriminalized.[4] Commercial distribution of cannabis is allowed in all jurisdictions where cannabis has been legalized, except Vermont and the District of Columbia. Prior to January 2018, the Cole Memorandum provided some protection against the enforcement of federal law in states that have legalized, but it was rescinded by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.[5]
2. Prison is the worst place to be for any illness. Prison officials and health care staff ROUTINELY ignore protocol, ignore illness, and ignore the law. Also, they regularly LIE about “cause of death”, so we will never know the true number of deaths thus caused.
The “Double Whammy” reminds me of this oldie: Double shot of my Baby’s love = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk4Rj9WXjko
Excerpts from the article
The most recent inmate to die as the COVID-19 crisis rips through the federal prison system is a 62-year-old who had less than two years left on an 18-year sentence for marijuana charges.
Fidel Torres was sentenced to 220 months in prison way back in 2006 after he waived a jury trial and let a judge decide his fate. Torres was convicted on a conspiracy charge for possession with intent to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana, as well as with aiding and abetting the possession with intent to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana. During the case, federal prosecutors also pointed to two previous convictions on Torres’ record, both of which were marijuana-related.
The same judge who found Torres guilty and decided his sentence — U.S. District Judge George Kazen of the Southern District of Texas — later denied Torres a sentencing reduction for which he would otherwise have qualified under revised 2014 U.S. Sentencing Commission guidelines, based on relatively minor instances of prison misconduct.
Kazen filed a form order stating that Torres “qualifies for sentence reduction, but the Court will not grant the reduction because of behavior while in custody.” Those violations, according to the government, included “sanctions for stealing, possessing stolen property, possessing an unauthorized item, being insolent to staff, and interfering with taking count.”
“After the commission reduced the drug guideline retroactively in 2014, nearly 32,000 people got shorter, fairer sentences,” said Kevin Ring, who heads the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums. Some 19,000 people were denied relief, Ring added. Less than 2% of those denials were due to prison misconduct, “and Mr. Torres appears to have been part of that very small and unfortunate minority,” he said.
Kazen also banned Torres, who became a prolific pro se litigator behind bars, from filing anything to the court docket without the court’s permission.
Advocates like Ring say that cases like Torres’ show that the federal Bureau of Prisons needs to do more to expand home confinement to save lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Bureau records show that Torres was scheduled for release in February 2022. “Fidel Torres was 62 years old and was nearing the end of a lengthy sentence for selling marijuana. He seems like a poster child for home confinement,” Ring told HuffPost.
“Instead, he dies on the same day Michael Cohen goes home after spending a year in prison,” Ring said, referring to the recent release of President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, who wasn’t scheduled for release until November 2021. “Even if one assumes the BOP is acting with the best of intentions, its decision-making process is impossible to understand.”
Several other defendants in Torres’ case received shorter sentences under plea deals or later had their sentences reduced.
The Bureau of Prisons press release about Torres’ death doesn’t mention any medical issues. But in 2006, his attorney told the court that Torres was diabetic and going blind. The judge ordered Torres to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
Torres, according to BOP, tested positive for COVID-19 on May 2. He was admitted to a hospital on May 6 and placed on a ventilator. He died on Wednesday, “with immediate cause of death listed as septic shock due to COVID-19 pneumonia.”
At the Lexington Federal Medical Center in Kentucky, where Torres was incarcerated, 212 inmates have tested positive for COVID-19. Four Lexington inmates have died. As of Thursday, BOP reported that 1,735 federal inmates had confirmed positive COVID-19 tests and 59 inmates have died.
Chief Justice extends Judicial Emergency until June 13
While the wheels of injustice never stop, the wheels of justice move ever more slowly. I do believe (based on filings during the past 3 months which have gotten NO response) that many judges are simply loafing.
ACTUAL WHEEL OF JUSTICE IN MOST OF AMERICA’S COURTS! THIS ONE WAS PHOTOGRAPHED IN A FAMILY COURT.
Excerpts from the Article:
In consultation with the other members of the Supreme Court on Thursday, Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz, Jr. extended the Judicial Emergency and related orders, due to the public health emergency caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, until June 13.
This is the second 30-day extension of the March 16 Judicial Emergency Order. This means that court facilities will continue to be closed to the public at least through June 13, or until the order declaring a judicial emergency is modified or lifted.
“Our state continues to operate under the governor’s emergency declarations,” Chief Justize Seitz said. “Those restrictions – vital to protecting the health and safety of Delawareans – do not presently allow us to increase activity in judicial facilities. Therefore, I have entered an order (Thursday) extending the judicial emergency declaration until June 13, 2020.
“As I have noted before, with the exception of trials, all state courts continue to use video and audio platforms to conduct as much court business as possible. The goal is to work down each court’s non-trial casework so we are prepared for increasing court operations when health and science experts tell us it is safe and reasonable to do so.”
The Court Reopening Committee, led by Superior Court Judge William C. Carpenter, Jr. and staffed by judicial officers and employees from the state courts, our judicial system partners, and a medical expert on infectious disease, is drafting the plan for a gradual and safe increase in activities at all judicial facilities.
The committee hopes to have a final report and recommendation in May, with a possible “first phase” limited increase in judicial facility activity in June.
The Whole Story:
First Circuit: Home Search Affidavit Failed to Establish Nexus of Crime and Evidence
Another super sloppy search warrant by police. Thousands of criminals can thank cops for these each year.
Excerpts from the Article:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the suppression of evidence seized from a suspected drug dealer’s home as fruit of the poisonous tree.
Jamal Roman was alleged in a search warrant application submitted by DEA Special Agent Scott Smith to be “a known cocaine trafficker” who “oversaw distribution of narcotics” for Javier Gonzalez. That suspicion was the result of the cooperation of a confidential informant (“CI”) who in January 2014 was caught with three kilograms of cocaine. The CI subsequently agreed to cooperate with law enforcement, who then initiated surveillance of Roman and Gonzalez.
Two months later, Smith drafted an affidavit to support a search warrant application of seven locations. The search warrants were granted on March 21, 2014, and the searches conducted four days later. Roman was indicted on March 24, 2016, by a grand jury on one count of conspiracy to distribute cocaine and heroin and a count of distribution and possession of cocaine.
He moved to suppress the fruits of the search of his person, residence, and business. The district court found the affidavit supporting the searches “contained material misrepresentations and omissions made with reckless disregard for the truth and without which a finding of probable cause would not have been made.” It granted suppression of evidence obtained from the business and home, which yielded $438,560, a firearm, and photographic identification documents.
The Government appealed as to the search of the home only, arguing there was a nexus between drug activity and the home. The First Circuit noted that the nexus element requires a showing that “enumerated evidence of the offense will be found at the place searched.” United States v. Dixon, 787 F.3d 55 (1st Cir. 2015).
The inquiry is not whether “the owner of the property is suspected of crime” but rather whether “there is reasonable cause to believe that the specific things to be searched for and being seized are located on the property to which entry is sought.” Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547 (1978).
The First Circuit saw “no basis to conclude … that drug related evidence would be present at Roman’s home.” The Government failed to show he dealt drugs from the home, and it agreed the drug headquarters was among the other searched places. There was no showing in the affidavit that Roman had even been at the home in question, was his residence or that he had taken contraband there. The statement that he was a known drug dealer was conclusionary.
The affidavit also failed to offer corroboration that Roman was a close associate of Gonzalez or oversaw a narcotics operation. The statement that Roman was a known drug dealer was found to be conclusionary and unsupported by any facts. The affidavit was found to rely upon “speculative inferences piled upon inferences” that Roman’s home would yield evidence. As it failed to establish “a clear and substantial connection between the illegal activity and the place searched,” the district court properly suppressed the fruits of that search, the Court ruled.
Accordingly, the Court affirmed the district court’s grant of the motion to suppress evidence obtained from Roman’s residence. See: United States v. Roman, 942 F.3d 43 (1st Cir. 2019).
Opioid Epidemic Keeps Climbing at California Prisons, and Claiming Lives of Released Prisoners as Well
It still goes on! So where are all the drugs coming from? Despite all the bullshit put out by prison officials, 95% of ALL contraband – including drugs – is brought in by the fucking guards!
And let us not lose sight of the fact that addicts need treatment, NOT prison!
Excerpts from the Article:
With opioid overdoses claiming the lives of over 68,000 Americans annually, detention facilities have reported a corresponding rise in drug-related deaths among those incarcerated or recently released. (See PLN, September 2019, p. 1. )California’s nearly three dozen penal institutions recorded 997 overdoses in 2018, more than double the number just three years earlier. Forty prisoners died from overdoses in California in 2017, a rate three times the average nationwide.
Although cancer, heart disease and liver disease remain the top killers of California prisoners, overdoses have outpaced suicides and homicides since 2017 to claim the fourth spot. Meanwhile, a November 21, 2019 story in Capital & Main said that “Drug overdoses are the single greatest factor contributing to Los Angeles’ rising rate of homeless mortality,” and that many of those dying on the streets were recently released prisoners. “Released prisoners may get clean behind bars…but the medications prescribed in jail detox programs aren’t normally the kind to adequately wean them from their opioid cravings,” the story said. “With the resultant loss of tolerance, if they relapse on the outside one erroneously judged dose can kill them.”
The numbers of prison deaths have risen despite increases in funds to fight the influx of drugs into the state’s lockups. Under a 2018 plan spearheaded by former Gov. Jerry Brown, $13.8 million was spent in California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) facilities on body scanners, urine tests, drug-sniffing dogs and camera surveillance, yet these added security measures have made little impact.
The former finance chairman of the guards’ union, Joe Baumann, blamed loopholes in the process. The scanners do not detect drugs smuggled inside orifices, which he said visitors could remove in a bathroom and then pass to prisoners. Other smugglers filled tennis balls with contraband substances and threw them over the penitentiary fences. Although visits are limited to weekends, employees have access to prisoners at all times, and Baumann admitted that occasionally ‘‘dirty” guards had facilitated smuggling operations. Corrupt staff are the main conduits, in terms of sheer bulk, of drugs introduced into detention facilities yet they are subjected to fewer searches or countermeasures, which allows the problem to continue.
“There are so many opportunities, so much money to be made, I don’t think there’s one single answer,” agreed Jody Lewen, who established the Prison University Project to offer higher education at San Quentin State Prison. “As long as there are human beings going in and out, there are going to be opportunities.”
The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that two-thirds of the U.S.’s 2.3 million prisoners suffer an addiction to drugs or alcohol. But most of the country’s lockups – about 2,000 state and federal prisons and 3,100 county and municipal jails – do not provide any of the three drugs used in Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT), despite approval from the federal Food and Drug Administration. Only 120 jails in 32 states as well as just 10 state prison systems offer even one of the three MAT medications: methadone, buprenorphine or Vivitrol.
The problem continues at least two years after release, when former prisoners face a risk of death triple that of the general population. In just the first two weeks, the risk of a fatal overdose is 13 times higher.
That’s why Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo led the state in 2016 to begin providing all three drugs for MAT to every one of its state prisoners with an opioid addiction. Along with addiction counseling, the one-of-a-kind, $2-million-a-year program – which includes follow-up treatment after a prisoner is released – has cut overdose deaths after release by two-thirds, from 26 to just nine in its first full year. Some critics question whether substituting one drug for another really solves the problem or merely prolongs it.
“Half my friends are in graveyards,” said 58-year-old former Rhode Island prisoner Lloyd Baker, “because when they got out of prison, they used what they did before they got in – and now they’re gone. I was one of the lucky ones.”
In May 2019, California Gov. Gavin Newsom introduced a plan to provide treatment at most of CDCR’s correctional facilities to prisoners struggling with addiction. With an estimated two-year cost of $233 million, the plan would be the nation’s largest.
“The value of this goes way beyond prisons,” emphasized Dr. Matt Willis, public health officer in Marin County, where San Quentin State Prison is located. “This will save lives and money.”
County emergency medical crews responded to four fatal overdoses of fentanyl on San Quentin’s Death Row between November 2017 and December 2018. The death of a fifth condemned prisoner in June 2019 was also attributed to a heroin overdose.
A rise in popularity of fentanyl – a synthetic opioid that can be 100 times more powerful than morphine – is a factor in California’s burgeoning prisoner overdoses. Because of its potency, an effective dose requires a very small amount of the drug, making it easier to smuggle. In April 2018, at least a dozen men at Mule Creek State Prison overdosed on fentanyl during a single weekend. One of them died.
Newsom’s plan, like the one in Rhode Island, includes substance abuse treatment for prisoners facing release to help them remain in recovery after they leave prison.
“The way to interrupt the cycle of addiction and crime that lands people in court over and over again is to treat the addiction,” Dr. Willis said. Another way is to decriminalize drugs and treat it as a public health problem the same way that smoking and alcoholism are treated.
Around the ValleyCampusCurrent AffairsShowcase Reforming an incarcerated America – Excellent Article – kra
I have posted many articles showing that a great way – maybe the best way – to reduce crime (reduce recidivism) and lower criminal justice costs is to EDUCATE inmates.
I love this sentence: “It’s reminding them that they have a voice . . . no matter if they are being called a number or an inmate . . . that they’re people that can tell stories,”… it reminds me that my first Letter to the Editor upon release from prison in 2012 was titled “NO VOICE”, and published in several papers.
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE??
Excerpts from the Article:
How do we reform the justice system in a country that has unparalleled rates of incarceration and of those returning to prison? This common question is growing in the conversations between members of the American public, millions of which are intertwined in the criminal justice system at various levels.
Many politicians, academic leaders, and reformists offer a solution to the growing problem: education. With the growth of postsecondary education classes being offered to people who are incarcerated around the country and in our local community, there is clear evidence indicating education’s rehabilitating abilities.
On the national level, education programs within prisons are increasing as correctional facilities, academic institutions, national organizations, and businesses are seeing the quantitative data that proves that these programs reduce recidivism — the tendency of a criminal to re-offend after leaving prison — and, consequently, reduce the costs with which incarceration burdens taxpayers.
These programs have an overwhelmingly positive socioeconomic impact on the community in which they are offered. “Prison is an incredibly expensive resource,” says Ruth Delaney, a program manager at the VERA Institute for Justice who provides assistance to corrections agencies and colleges looking to expand postsecondary education in prisons. Any program that lowers recidivism lowers the cost of prison, and a summary of the research done for the last 35 years “has shown us that [for] people who participate in college programs in prison, the likelihood of them going back to prison is 48 percent less.” Not only does this give people who were formerly incarcerated the opportunity to redeem themselves, and make the communities in which they are released safer, but funding for programs like this will also deliver direct economic turnout — “for every $1 invested, [it] has been shown to produce four or five dollars in return” to be exact, indicated by Delaney.
Education programs also produce highly qualified employees upon release, which business owners are usually satisfied with. Ben Pierce is the Hiring Manager of the Massachusetts based company Holt & Bugbee, which employs formerly incarcerated individuals. He notes, “A growing economy needs people who are willing to work . . . This includes hundreds of thousands of people who are entangled in various levels of the criminal justice system.”
Employment Coordinator at the Hampshire County Jail, Rafael Santos, says that “we try discerning whos appropriate to go out [for work release] based on their institutional adjustment; their involvement in education and treatment.” He notes that even in classes that may not have a direct association with the jobs that they are seeking boosts their appeal in the workforce because “it shows that they’re doing something while in custody, being proactive.” Consequently, many different aspects of a society observe a cascade of benefits of prison education.
UMass Amherst is actually involved in this national movement, collaborating with the Hampshire County Jail to provide people who are incarcerated with an opportunity for education and expression.
Professor Annie Raymond in the Math Department began a lecture series at the jail in the fall of 2018. She had previously been involved with larger-scale prison education programs in Seattle and Berkley and wanted to bring that opportunity to the UMass community. Here in Hampshire County, professors from different departments commute to the Hampshire County Jail to give lectures on a wide variety of topics, ranging from how the brain works to computer coding. The relationship between UMass and Hampshire County Jail is still in its infancy, but Professor Raymond hopes to cultivate it into a more well-established program that forms a direct “pipeline” between release from jail to enrollment at UMass — or even a class that regular UMass students take alongside students who are incarcerated. Professor Raymond values how much the students at the jail truly appreciate the opportunity they have been given and emphasizes that it will go a long way towards improving society in the long run.
Another faculty member involved, Professor Paul Collins from the Legal Studies department, lectures on myths of the Supreme Court. He echoes the sentiment of his colleagues, saying the students who are incarcerated are “one of the most engaged audiences I’ve ever had giving a lecture . . . [they] seemed genuinely excited to be talking to somebody about an issue that they care about.” Along with an interest in the subject came an interest in this University. “I did get [the] impression that some of these inmates were thinking about enrolling in college classes,” Professor Collins states, “and one of them specifically mentioned UMass.” If the program gains more support and more funding from UMass, this could certainly be possible. It would give UMass students the opportunity to encounter extremely different experiences, says Professor Raymond, which creates a rich and diverse campus, along with providing a stable future for those incarcerated.
The Social Justice Journalism class here at UMass Amherst, the first class that extends the opportunity for UMass students to get involved with the program and allows incarcerated people to earn college credit, was created by Professor Razvan Sibii and formerly co-taught by Shaheen Pasha. The course allows journalism students to teach the practice of journalism to people who are incarcerated and discuss issues of mass incarceration with them, creating a mutual learning process. An alumnus of UMass and former student of the class, Olivia Jones, notes the transformative experience the class had on her. She confessed that, as a prosecutor, “I spent a lot of time thinking about the inmates as cases” but the class reformed her to see those who are incarcerated on a holistic level — as complex people that have a past and a future. Education, specifically in areas such as journalism, amplifies the voices of the people who are incarcerated; a voice that is arguably the most important one to hear in the issue of mass incarceration. “It’s reminding them that they have a voice . . . no matter if they are being called a number or an inmate . . . that they’re people that can tell stories,” Jones says.
Not only is there quantitative data demonstrating the social and economic benefits of such programs, but there is also another facet to the issue that can not simply be explained by numbers. Education allows incarcerated students to regain a sense of dignity and humanity that the prison experience often strips from them and allows them to have something to look forward to in the midst of their repetitive and mundane lives behind bars. “People had told us that this was the first time in a long time that they felt valued . . . that someone appreciates their brain,” says Professor Sibii.
Olivia Jones remembers that one of the incarcerated individuals she worked within the classroom had told her that “he had something to live for” and she had seen the effects of the classes in “instilling determination and perseverance” in the other incarcerated people.
Every national movement begins at a local level.
Here at Hampshire County, The spirit of education and its reverberating effects can be felt in the classrooms of the County Jail, and the room in which many prisoner’s graduate for the first time in their lives. UMass Amherst has many plans in expanding the classes they offer at the jail, and by utilizing the enthusiasm of students and the expertise of the professors, along with the potential and willingness to learn of the inmates at the Hampshire County Jail, the local community at Amherst and Hampshire County could be a leader in incorporating education in prison. Massachusetts is a leading example for higher education in America, “and I’d love for them [Massachusetts] to be an example on education in prison as well,” Delaney states.
The Whole Story:
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