The Disturbing Reason 97% Of Federal Drug Defendants Plead Guilty

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has a disturbing report alleging the U.S. government essentially forces drug defendants to either plead guilty or rot in prison for an insane amount of time.

In the report, called "An Offer You Can't Refuse," HRW looks into the unsettling reasons why a whopping 97% of federal drug defendants plead guilty and never go to trial.

Here's how prosecutors generally get those guilty pleas, according to the report. Prosecutors often charge drug defendants with crimes that carry high mandatory minimum sentences — meaning judges will have to mete out harsh sentences if they're found guilty.

(Attorney General Eric Holder recently ordered prosecutors to stop charging defendants in a way that triggers mandatory minimums, but his directive doesn't apply to all drug defendants. Holder's policy may also go away with a new administration.)

Once prosecutors hit people with these charges, they offer them one surefire way to avoid harsh sentences — a plea agreement. Drug defendants often agree to plead guilty — and often testify against others — in exchange for a significantly reduced sentence.

In some cases, prosecutors actually threaten to file additional charges against a defendant if they refuse to plead guilty. One anonymous former federal prosecutor told HRW that they "penalize a defendant for the audacity of going to trial."

Given that nine out of 10 defendants who go to trial are found guilty, according to HRW, the "choice" is clear. From the report:

There is nothing inherently wrong with resolving cases through guilty pleas—it reduces the many burdens of trial preparation and the trial itself on prosecutors, defendants, judges, and witnesses. But in the US plea bargaining system, many federal prosecutors strong-arm defendants by offering them shorter prison terms if they plead guilty, and threatening them if they go to trial with sentences that, in the words of Judge John Gleeson of the Southern District of New York, can be “so excessively severe, they take your breath away.”

HRW profiled some folks who took their chances with a trial, and the results weren't pretty.

One of those defendants, Darlene Eckles, never touched drugs but let her drug-dealing brother crash at her house for six months and counted his money. She refused a deal for a 10-year prison sentence. Eckles, a nursing assistant with a young son, went to trial and got 20 years. Her brother, who led the conspiracy, pleaded guilty and testified against his sister. He got 11 years and eight months.

It's not unheard of for the leaders of drug rings to take advantage of plea deals and get less time than their underlings — in part because they have information they can trade in exchange for a deal. We've previously written about Mandy Martinson, an Iowa woman with a clean record who got a 15-year prison sentence for allegedly helping her boyfriend become a more "organized" drug dealer. That boyfriend got 12 years in prison.

As former U.S. attorney Scott Lassar said, according to HRW, "It’s a bounty system. [The defendant] gets credit for bringing in other people’s heads. If they don’t need you, you’re out of luck. If ringleader cooperates, he may get a better deal than people of lower culpability."

Jerry Brown vetoes bill to make some drug crimes 'wobblers'

Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed legislation Saturday that that would have given local prosecutors discretion when deciding whether a person charged with possessing a small amount of illegal drugs should be charged with a felony or a misdemeanor.

Under Senate Bill 649, by Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, possession of cocaine, heroin and other specified drugs would have been downgraded to the status of methamphetamine, Ecstasy or hashish, "wobblers" treated as felonies or misdemeanors depending on the circumstances.

Brown said in his veto message that state officials dealing with prison crowding in California are preparing "to examine in detail California's criminal justice system, including the current sentencing structure."

The Democratic governor said that "will be the appropriate time to evaluate our existing drug laws."

Supporters of the Leno bill had said it would reduce recidivism by eliminating some employment barriers resulting from a felony record. The California District Attorneys Association opposed the measure.

PHOTO CREDIT: A police officers conducts a traffic stop in Lincoln on Wednesday, September 29, 2010. The Sacramento Bee/Randall Benton

via http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/

Jerry Brown OKs change to drug-law definition of 'transporting'

Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation easing penalties for people accused of carrying illegal drugs for their own use in California, his office announced Thursday.

Assembly Bill 721, by Assemblyman Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, will change the definition of "transporting" a drug to mean transporting it for sale, eliminating prosecutors' ability to bring an additional charge against someone who might otherwise be accused only of possession.

"Too many people are getting caught up in the prison system with nothing more than a small amount of drugs for personal use," Bradford said in a prepared statement. "The broad interpretation of existing law wastes resources going after users instead of dealers."

Opponents said the bill was unreasonably soft on criminals.

The bill was one of nearly 30 the Democratic governor announced action on Thursday. Brown has less than two weeks to sign or veto hundreds of more bills sent to him before the Legislature adjourned for the year.

PHOTO: Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, left, Gov. Jerry Brown, center, and Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, right, celebrate a budget deal with a formal announcement at the California Capitol on Tuesday, June 11, 2013. The Sacramento Bee/Randy Pench

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/10/jerry-brown-oks-change-drug-law-definition-transport.html#storylink=cpy

via http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2013/10/jerry-brown-oks-change-drug-law-definition-transport.html

Legislature Stepping Away From Drug War

SACRAMENTO — If you get busted using methamphetamine, the D.A. can charge you with a misdemeanor or a felony. His choice. But if you're caught with cocaine or heroin, there's no option. It's a felony.

If there's logic in that, it escapes me. They're all addictive and destructive to mind and body.

Get high on one hard drug and you might receive a get-out-of-jail-free card. But another earns you a lifetime bad-guy tag.

The Legislature, as it rushes toward adjournment of its annual session Friday, is moving to correct that puzzling contradiction.

It is retreating a bit from the decades-long war on drugs.

"The war on drugs is a colossal failure," says AssemblymanTim Donnelly (R-Twin Peaks).

Yes, that Tim Donnelly, arguably California's most conservative state lawmaker, a self-proclaimed tea partyRepublican and one-time Minuteman vigilante who patrolled the border searching for Mexicans entering the U.S. illegally.

Donnelly last week cast a crucial vote that secured Assembly passage of a drug-sentencing bill by liberal Sen. Mark Leno(D-San Francisco). The measure now awaits Senate approval of Assembly amendments, then will be sent to Gov. Jerry Brown. No telling his view.

The bill, SB 649, would provide prosecutors the flexibility to treat all low-level drug possession offenses as either a misdemeanor or a felony — what's known as a "wobbler."

"We give nonviolent drug offenders long terms, offer them no treatment while they're incarcerated and then release them back into the community with few job prospects or options to receive an education," Leno says.

His bill, he continues, would allow local governments to reduce lockup costs and spend their money on drug rehabilitation, mental health services and probation, "reserving limited jail space for serious criminals."

Simple possession for personal use of meth already is a wobbler. This bill would add other hard drugs such as crack cocaine, powder cocaine and heroin.

It wouldn't affect sellers or manufacturers of hard drugs. Those crimes would remain felonies.

And users who steal or rob to finance their drug habits still would face felonies.

If it were left to him, Leno would make all drug possession offenses a misdemeanor. Thirteen other states have done that, varying widely from New York and Massachusetts to Wyoming and Mississippi.

"On average," the senator says, "reducing penalties to misdemeanors has resulted in lower drug use, higher rates of drug treatment participation and even less property and violent crime."

Leno sponsored a misdemeanor-only bill last year, and it failed miserably on the Senate floor.

Some liberals would legalize all drug use. That would be foolish. People — especially kids — should not be able to just walk into a Safeway and get blotto. Alcohol is bad enough. These are not "victimless" crimes. They destroy families.

It's important to remember that Leno is not proposing legalization, or even treating hard drugs like marijuana. Smoking pot in California, at worst, is considered an infraction, like a traffic ticket. No one gets jailed these days for toking weed.

Not many are even locked up in state prison solely for possessing hard drugs — only 827 out of 133,000 total inmates, according to the state corrections department. All were sentenced before Brown's 2011 "realignment" that shifted incarceration of most low-level offenders to local jails.

By George SkeltonCapitol Journal

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

California Senate approves change to drug law

State law would go easier on people who are busted for carrying illegal drugs for personal use under a bill approved by the California Senate yesterday.


Assembly Bill 721 changes the definition of "transporting" a drug to mean transporting it for sale, eliminating an additional charge for someone who might otherwise only be charged with drug possession.

"If you're in possession of a drug and you're walking down the street, you could be charged with transporting a drug even though your 'transporting' is just walking," said Sen. Rod Wright, D-Inglewood, as he presented the bill on the Senate floor.

The bill by Assemblyman Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, would not make it harder to prosecute drug dealers, Wright said, who would still be charged with transporting illegal drugs for sale.

"It simply says that... walking down the street does not qualify as transporting," Wright said.

"What this bill is intended to fix is that someone who would have been charged with simple possession, because their quantity was small, not end up with transportation for sale because (prosecutors) wanted to add charges."

Republicans argued against the bill, saying it would be too soft on criminals.

"This bill gives you a greater chance to get away with it or have it go easy on you," said Sen. Jim Nielsen, R-Gerber. "It is not a step in the right direction."

Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, countered that the bill could help chip away at the problem of crowding in California prisons.

"We're talking about a universe of people who will still be charged with one or more felonies. They will likely be going to state prison," Leno said. "The question is, do we want them to take up limited bed space for two or three years, or five or ten or 15 years?"

The state Senate passed the bill on a vote of 24-15. It now heads back to the Assembly for a concurrence vote before heading to Gov. Jerry Brown.

PHOTO: Assemblyman Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, in the Assembly chambers in March 2013. The Sacramento Bee/Hector Amezcua

War on drugs: The 'wobbler' option

The state should change its policy to allow possession of small amounts of addictive drugs to be charged as felonies or misdemeanors.

Simple possession of small amounts of methamphetamine — enough for personal use but presumably not for dealing — is a "wobbler" in California, meaning that offenses can be charged as either felonies or misdemeanors. It's different with possession of cocaine, opiates such as heroin and many other addictive drugs; they currently can be charged only as felonies.

The state Senate has now passed a bill to bring criminal handling of those drugs into line with methamphetamine, and the measure is before the Assembly. SB 649, by Democrat Mark Leno of San Francisco, is good policy and should be adopted.

The bill is an improvement over a version Leno offered last year to convert possession to a misdemeanor, with no felony option.

True, there is something perverse about locking people up for any period for possessing highly addictive drugs for their own use. Most offenders have the stuff on hand because they are hooked. For years California sent such addicts to prison, where little or no treatment was available. They were released on parole, which they were practically fated to violate by using drugs again — because they were, after all, addicted.

This foolhardy approach gave California a steady supply of unrecovered addicts shuttling between prison and the streets. That meant continuing damage to neighborhoods dealing with the addicted, plus overcrowded prisons. At the end of last year, for example, there were more than 4,000 inmates in state prison for possessing drugs for personal use.

It would be better to divert addicts from the criminal justice system entirely if they could be successfully treated without ever going to jail or even to court. But for many addicts, there remains a role for punishment, or at least the threat of punishment. Addiction may be a disease, but the afflicted include families, neighborhoods and, ultimately, all of society, and they all have a stake in successful rehab. When the carrot of a clean life is insufficient to keep an addict in recovery, the stick — the prospect of a criminal sentence — remains there for backup.

Some argue that these drugs ought to be decriminalized altogether, as California has done with marijuana. Simple possession of cannabis for personal use is now not even a misdemeanor here but a traffic-ticket-like infraction, punishable by a fine.

The key distinction, though, is the addictive nature of cocaine, heroin and the other drugs covered by current felony laws. Addiction affects the user's behavior — and thus imposes its damage on society and not just on the user — well past the period of intoxication. There is room for a conversation about whether decriminalization is nevertheless a more rational approach for addictive drugs, but it's not the conversation, or the bill, at hand. Either SB 649 is a smart reform, or it's a good first step in a more far-reaching sentencing revamp. Either way, it's better than the status quo.

Opponents of the bill offer a number of arguments against the measure, but they fall flat. Reducing the penalties doesn't make a drug any less dangerous or addictive, they say. True enough, but so what? The existing law doesn't keep users from getting hooked in the first place. There is little point in locking up addicts for as long as three years if it's not part of a larger program to get them clean.

Misdemeanor convictions mean a year in county jail instead of up to three years in state prison, prosecutors argue, and jails are already filled to capacity. But this argument practically answers itself. Prisons too are filled well past capacity and have been under orders from a panel of federal judges to reduce their inmate populations.

And the point is moot anyway for people convicted of simple possession since October 2011, when the public-safety realignment program went into effect. They already are spending their 18 months (and up to three years) in county jail, not state prison. That's not some unforeseen and unfortunate consequence of realignment but is instead the essence of the program's design: Counties have the opportunity and now the incentive to offer treatment and alternative monitoring, and inmates and outpatients alike are treated closer to the neighborhoods to which they will (one way or another) soon return. They can begin the process right away of reconnecting with family and other positive influences in their lives, but they do so while they are still being supervised, so that the negative influences of their old neighborhoods can be monitored and mitigated. Offenders housed and treated closer to home show greater continuing success than those isolated in prisons hundreds of miles from home.

What if prosecutors and judges see a pattern of resistance and antisocial behavior in the addict? What if there is evidence, although not a record, of earlier crimes? That's one of the smart parts of this bill — the felony option is still available.

Moving from a straight felony to a wobbler is not without its hazards. The change would grant additional discretion to prosecutors and judges, and where there is discretion, there can be discrimination — by race, by class, by geography. Will African American defendants be more likely to be tried on felony charges than whites? Will district attorneys in one county file only misdemeanors and in another only felonies?

If the last three decades of criminal justice policy have taught California anything, it's that there can be no autopilot when it comes to sentencing. There must be constant vigilance — and in the modern era, that means arrest and sentencing data must be collected and available for public scrutiny. It should fall to the state attorney general to pick through those numbers, see to it that wobbler charges are not unfairly targeting any particular group and flag problems when laws need to be adjusted to ensure equal justice.

Via latimes.com

Long Beach Community Peace and Justice Summit, October 26, 2011

LONG BEACH COMMUNITY PEACE AND JUSTICE SUMMIT

We shall address the devastating effects of the failed “War on Drugs” and the many barriers to re-entry that people confront when coming out of prison.  Speakers at the Summit will talk about the damage felt by whole communities as a result of imprisoning people at alarming rates, communities who were already underserved to begin with and in need of more services and resources.  Elected officials, policy makers, administrative leaders and government personnel will hear presentations and testimony from those directly affected by our criminal justice policies and practices.  We will share specific changes and policy reform needed for us to be treated fairly and as equals in society, including declaring the end to the broken “War on Drugs”. 

The US Supreme Court has ruled that California must release tens of thousands of non-serious, non-violent, non-sexual inmates back into their communities due to overcrowding. In so doing, AB-109 was en-acted by Governor Brown. Long Beach will experience a vast majority of these individuals coming back home, as it is a concentrated city that has incarcerated many under the “non-non-non.”

The failed “War on Drugs” and the “get tough on crime” policies created barriers for us in employment, housing, social services and family reunification.  Denying us access to basic needs such as food and shelter is inhumane and traps us at the bottom of society without the possibility to live decently, fulfill our potential and leaves us vulnerable to cycling back into prison.

In a nation that prides itself on democracy, freedom and justice for all, it is crucial that we ban together to ensure that all people are treated with respect and have the opportunity to make the most of one’s life because “nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”

We urge the public to come out and join us, as we address issues that will help curtail recidivism and create a safer community with specific results stemming from voices that speak to Peace & Justice.

Contact: Fanya Baruti @ 323-357-8431 Office 562-688-0472 Cell

Long Beach Councilman Dee Andrews 562-570-6816 Office ---Attn: Tonya Martin