“Life without parole”

Think that’s the punishment for people convicted of first degree murder?

Think again. In modern America, it has become a routine punishment for people convicted of certain victimless crimes. And judges have no discretion over whether to impose it, like this federal judge in Florida:

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Stephanie George and Judge Roger Vinson had quite different opinions about the lockbox seized by the police from her home in Pensacola. She insisted she had no idea that a former boyfriend had hidden it in her attic. Judge Vinson considered the lockbox, containing a half-kilogram of cocaine, to be evidence of her guilt.

But the defendant and the judge fully agreed about the fairness of the sentence he imposed in federal court.

“Even though you have been involved in drugs and drug dealing,” Judge Vinson told Ms. George, “your role has basically been as a girlfriend and bag holder and money holder but not actively involved in the drug dealing, so certainly in my judgment it does not warrant a life sentence.”

Yet the judge had no other option on that morning 15 years ago. As her stunned family watched, Ms. George, then 27, who had never been accused of violence, was led from the courtroom to serve a sentence of life without parole.

No other option?

What I cannot understand is how any thinking person with a conscience could be a judge under such a system. I could not do that to people whose crime consisted of possessing or engaging in consensual transactions with substances of which the government disapproves.  I honestly don’t know what I would do were I the judge. Invite the defense counsel to move for dismissal and then simply dismiss the case? Commit a deliberate legal error in the hope that an appellate court would reverse it? Anyway, I could not impose a life sentence for a victimless crime. To my mind, that in itself is a crime, and one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, for it is done by the state.

Where is the ACLU? Where is Amnesty International? The only people who seem to care are the usual libertarian cranks, none of whom will ever be allowed to be judges. In fact, if I were summoned for jury duty in a drug case and then truthfully disclosed my views about the immorality of drug laws, I would never be allowed to sit on the jury. That’s because a jury of one’s peers means only those peers whose opinions can withstand vetting by government apparatchiks.

When substances that get people high are made into serious crimes, such a system doesn’t merely create more crime and huge criminal opportunities, it causes massive disrespect for law, glamorizes criminals, and blurs the distinction between right and wrong.

While they might not be criminals in the legal sense, I think that in the moral sense the drug enforcement apparatchiks are among the worst criminals in this country.

No doubt those who continue on their merry way sending people to prison for life without parole think their critics are the one who cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

I’d call them pigs, but I do try to be civil here. Also, I don’t think it’s fair to besmirch useful and friendly barnyard animals.