The DA in Houston, Pat Lycos, is no longer prosecuting drug pipe residue cases. The police in the area (10,000 strong) don’t like it.
They called it the War on Drugs; to cynics, it was the new Jim Crow.
The national policies against illegal drug use in the 1990s had the pernicious effect of wholesale prosecution of young African-American men, despite evidence that drug abuse was equal across all ethnic groups.
On any given day in 1999, according to a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights study, nearly one- third of black men ages 20 to 29 answered to the criminal justice system, a tragic statistic fueled by narcotics arrests.
If this was war, the casualties could be found in a decimated black community robbed of its sons, brothers and fathers.
In that context, the decision by District Attorney Pat Lykos to treat possession of trace amounts of drugs as misdemeanors instead of felonies – like crack cocaine residue in a pipe – doesn’t just make good use of limited resources, it recognizes that law enforcement practices can create a distortion of reality.
Here is why the police object to the policy:
Lykos was criticized last week by Houston police union representatives, who argued that her policy left dangerous criminals on the street. They argue that people with trace amounts of drugs should be jailed for felonies, rather than given tickets for misdemeanor offenses, because crack addicts often commit other crimes to obtain their next fix.
A law professor in the area has some thoughts.
“The police aren’t really interested in arresting these people because they are in possession of residue, they’re interested in arresting them to achieve a different purpose,” said Geoffrey Corn, a professor at South Texas College of Law. “But the DA has an obligation to prosecute crime, not people. You don’t target people, you target crime.”He said the argument by police is understandable, but it disregards the presumption of innocence.
“It’s problematic to endorse a concept that is, effectively, preventive arrest,” Corn said.
Should we be arresting drunks because because people on alcohol are more likely to commit spousal abuse?
Should we arrest people for espousing anarchist views because some anarchist are prone to commit property crimes?
Do we really want a police state? Or would we rather live with the imperfections that liberty allows? For a very long time we (as a country) preferred liberty. Some of us still do. The police seem to be of a different opinion. At least in Houston. Where there seems to be a problem.
“The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” -Thomas Jefferson Notes on Virginia Query 17, 1782.
and
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. – Thomas Jefferson
We used to live by those words. Now we just mouth them. Well I’m old school. I intend to live my life as a free man. If some one objects they can always kill me. And some day they just might. No matter. Such a death would be a victory for liberty. Live free or die. Maybe live free and die. I was a dead man the day I swore the oath to join the Navy. I am 40+ years to the good.
Comments
8 responses to “Disregarding The Presumption Of Innocence”
Medre “Possession of drug paraphenalia” has always been bullshit. It is the making of an assuption, something our legal system is not supposed to do. It is akin to finding bullet casings on your 100 acres in July and claiming they are evidence of you illegally hunting out of season. “Possession of drug paraphenalia” should only be a crime if the accused was seen actually using the said paraphenalia in a manner that would be consistant with the use of illegal drugs or there is other evidence consistant with immediately prior drug use.
I have to say I think the police are right in that they put themselves in professional jeopardy by selectively disregarding laws on the whims of a DA.
Get rid of the law and then it’d all be moot.
Want to bet on whether or not the DA expects to have his name on a ballot soon?
arcs,
It is the traditional prerogative of the DA to decide which cases to bring to trial.
And the emphasis seems to be to stop filling prisons with low level offenders. It costs too much. Texas Judges have been calling for this kind of reform for at least the last 5 years.
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State District Judge Michael McSpadden has presided over Houston’s criminal cases since 1982. In that time, he said, the “War on Drugs” has been lost and he has changed his mind about his “get tough on crime” stance. He urges a policy of treatment and second chances for addicts.
“Pat Lykos and I are not close, and in fact probably don’t like each other, but she’s right about this,” the veteran jurist said this week. “Almost everyone’s in agreement except, I guess, the police unions.”
McSpadden said he, not Lykos, has led the charge to change how these trace cases are handled.
“No one respects law enforcement more than I do, but they’re wrong about this,” McSpadden said. “I want them out there going after the career criminals, the sex offenders, the people who pose a real threat to our society, and not someone who has a residue amount of drugs.”
McSpadden has twice implored the Legislature to change state law to something close to the policy.
In 2009, McSpadden and 16 other judges wrote a letter to Gov. Rick Perry asking him to officially change the law. The Republican said he believes all 22 criminal district judges would now support the legislative change.
And, he said, Lykos followed his lead.
Instead of changing the law, however, she simply changed the mechanism for filing the charges. District attorneys have discretion in what they prosecute. She unilaterally decided the office would stop prosecuting the cases as felonies, delighting reformers and enraging her detractors, who say she is not following the law.
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Crack-policy-puts-Harris-County-DA-at-odds-with-2346724.php
Traditionalists decry the social changes of the last several decades. And they fume that not everyone sees morality the same way they do. They wonder why so many have come to reject their values these past 40-50 years. They wonder why their religious proclamations fall on deaf ears. Yet it never occurs to these same traditionalists that their support for the WOD might be a factor in that alienation.
The drug laws serve as a modern day version of “The Scarlet Letter”, but instead of a large red “A” sewn to a person’s clothing, we give them a metaphorical large “D” in the form of their arrest record that follows them every time they apply for work, school, a loan, etc. Annually, hundreds of thousands of people find themselves saddled with that scarlet “D” and they begin paying the price almost immediately in some fashion or another. They know, intuitively or expressly, that they’ve done nothing truly criminal to warrant this moral approbation. They also know the cultural institutions that saw to it that they were burdened with the scarlet “D”. They think, correctly, that society has given them a raw deal.
With the passage of time, there are now tens of millions of people that are now subject to the scarlet “D”. They want little to do with a culture that mistreated them so badly. I can’t say I blame them.
If I gave some one a raw deal, I wouldn’t expect that person to think very highly of me. Yet our drug warriors have seen to it that tens of millions of Americans have gotten a raw deal over the decades, yet they are shocked that the people that have gotten the short end of the stick don’t see them as moral heroes and no longer grovel at their moral proclamations.
If you make war on your neighbor, you shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t see you as a friend. Why should they?
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the Children of God (Matt. 5:9). Remember, drugs didn’t start the war on drugs. It was the so-called forces of morality that began the hostilities. It is incumbent upon them to end their immoral actions.
Heard an advert today about where to buy the booze for an ‘epic’ holiday part- ay. Inshallah in my lifetime I hear the same advert for epic dope.
It would not be possible for me to have less respect for law enforcement or people associated.
So you have elected judges and elected prosecutors openly deciding and announcing they will prosecute and determine criminal law as they see fit, legislature be damned.
While this may be to an end you and I agree is good – an end to WOD – you seem to think this is an acceptable way to get there. I don’t.
Arcs,
Evidently you missed this:
District attorneys have discretion in what they prosecute.
And it is not something new. It is traditional.
Keep up.
I recently saw a proposal was an anti-drug law that might be worthwhile.