How a first crack cocaine offense led to a life sentence
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Accidentally bounce a check? That's a bad check charge, another charge for theft by unlawful taking (is there theft by LAWFUL taking?), another charge for theft by deception (is there theft by honesty?), theft of services if it was for a service or possibly retail theft if it was for goods at a store. All because your check at the local grocery store didn't clear because the deposit you made took an extra day to process. Now you're on the hook for the $200, and $1000+ in legal costs fines, etc. Because the prosecutor doesn't want to waste time in a trial, he offers you to plead down to just two of those charges, which by all rights all you should really have to face is the bad check charge to start with. Now you understand why 1 in 32 people is dealing with prison, jail, or probation in America.
Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=Lf0TCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA48&ots=...
The title tries to paint her as a ordinary user, but it sounds like she was actually a mid-level dealer, or at least some kind of participant in a drug ring. And who carried a gun while making deals. Who entered the business hoping to make even more money than the hair salon, burger joint, and restaurant she started with unknown degrees of success, according to the article. It also sounds like she managed to get hit with a particularly bad set of federal sentence enhancements - maybe she got into this without the right kind of help telling her what to do to minimize sentences given arrest in the current legal climate.
I tend to feel the most sympathy for the end-users who get huge sentences for simple possession of modest, personal-use amounts of drugs, particularly when they're addicted. It's much harder to feel sympathy for those who enter a highly illegal market looking to make big money. Yeah, prohibition is kinda bullshit, but as long as we're stuck with it, remember that the reason the prohibited market is so profitable is that you risk doing hard time if you get caught, and enforcement is aggressive and vigorous. You wanna make that money, I don't hate you for it, but don't ask me to cry for you when you get busted.
Some of the jurors who convicted her were "dismayed":
> “Life in prison? My God, that is too harsh,” said James J. Siwinski, a retired worker for a glass company. “That is too severe. There’s people killing people and getting less time than that. She wasn’t an angel. But enough is enough already.”
which means you have less sympathy than some of those who know the full facts of the case. Moreover,
> "The Justice Department announced last month that one of Colombia’s most notorious drug traffickers and a senior paramilitary leader will serve about 15 years in prison for leading an international drug trafficking conspiracy that imported more than 100,000 kilograms of cocaine into the United States."
No matter how little you may cry over her imprisonment, no one else is crying over that either, but rather the injustice of the length. Why does a mid-level dealer get such drastically higher punishment than a high-level dealer? Is it because the international drug trafficker could afford "the right kind of help"?
If so, do you shed no tears over a justice system where the rich can easily buy freedom or leniency?
The article is making the point that justice is malleable which is a scary thought for everyone even if they aren't the people you:
> tend to feel the most sympathy for
This is where the rubber meets the road. We all need to think about what type of world we want to help build.
Maybe someday you will wield a small amount of power in some situation, and it will be very clear what you are expected to do, and you will have the burden, opportunity, privilege, honor, to refuse to be a part of it. That you will not put bricks in place to make the world worse, that you will defy expectations and put bricks where they actually belong.
But the point of the article, it seems, is that he had no power: Mandatory minimums completely tied his hands and gave him no options.
So while this is a travesty, I'm not sure the blame lays with Judge Solis.
Yep, wonder if the I can get in a 9 hole before sundown.
For one thing: I'm not sure what would happen to a judge if she or he were to simply ignore the law when it came to sentencing. (Maybe someone here does.) My assumption is that they would be penalized somehow and that, in the end, the legal sentence would be applied, anyway.
I read the headline and comments and went into the article expecting it to be someone using cocaine at a party, but they were buying very large quantities. Surely you think at that point about the impact your involvement will have on your (or any) community.
Sometimes I wonder whether these sentencing laws are influenced by religion.
"Influence" is another nebulous term. Some religious faiths in the US considered those with dark skin to have been marked and cursed by God to a life of subjugation. This faith has certainly historically lead to racially biased laws and racially biased justice system. (Eg, slavery in the US, but also institutionalized racism like redlining carried out by the Federal Housing Administration.)
The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which raised the penalties on the crack to be much 100x higher than that of non-crack cocaine, strongly disproportionally affected black Americans. Part of the reasoning behind the Act was to help the black communities ravaged by drug use, but a larger part of it was the ratcheting up of the War on Drugs. This War has its roots in racist viewpoints of the early 1900s. Anslinger, one of the early high officials in that "war" is often quoted as saying:
> “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others … the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races… Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death … Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men. ”Marihuana leads to pacifism and communist brainwashing … You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother … Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”
With "Their Satanic music" it's not hard to infer that there is a religious influence, though it's only one of many influences in that quote.
In short, a question of "whether these sentencing laws are influenced by religion" can be easily be answered "yes".
Then again, I could also find people who use religion to argue for reducing the severity of these laws.
https://news.ycombinator.com/news?p=33
Don't tell me this was caused by user flags, because it clearly wasn't.
Edit: It is completely gone now.
It was caused entirely by user flags. Why would you say it wasn't?
Moderators didn't penalize the post. We did unkill it so discussion could continue.