Via DrugWarRant, Michael Hawkins blogs the incredible story of his participation on the jury in a major drug case (read it, seriously). It's a familiar tale of prosecutors going after everyone in sight:
When the defendant's brother [convicted in a separate case] took the chair, the first words out of his mouth were, "I don't know why they went after my brother. He had nothing to do with any of it."
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The government's total evidence against the defendant -- who was shown to be a hard-working construction worker who has not missed a day's work in eleven years -- consisted of the following: seven calls (out of over 65,000), over a two-day period, from the defendant's cellphone to one of the drug runners' phones; and the fact that the blue Honda Passport was registered to the defendant. Through skillful questioning, the defense lawyer showed how the defendant's brother frequently "borrowed" the defendant's car, and that the defendant frequently left his cellphone in the car, attached to a charger.
Hawkins theorizes that the guilty brother's refusal to identify key associates motivated prosecutors to target the other sibling, despite his apparent innocence. The jury figured it out, and justice was served. So the system works, I guess, if you don't mind prosecutors wasting your tax dollars on cases that should never have gone to trial in the first place.
This is hardly the first time a frustrated prosecutor has sought to make an example of someone who merely lived an innocent life adjacent to the criminality of others. Trophy prosecutions are an inevitable byproduct of the drug warriors' insatiable lust for headlines and elusive "victories." Meanwhile, innocence places drug defendants in a unique predicament because they have no information to barter in exchange for leniency.
Who among the great drug warrior army will stand up for the innocent victims in this glorious battle of good vs. evil? There are no words to describe the callousness of those who advocate blind sentencing in the war on drugs, while simultaneously casting an ever widening net that will so inevitably capture bystanders and pawns.
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