March 07, 2008
Telling judges and DAs to piss off
The creative talent behind the camera at HBO's The Wire have a message for prosecutors and judges: Piss off. When it comes to drug prosecutions, they've had enough.
If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.
Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren't fictional.
Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price and David Simon author a rebuke to the entire "war on drugs" for Time Magazine, making the case for jurors to essentially lie during voir dire, the French phrase for jury selection that translates as "speak the truth."
I'm sympathetic to the idea of jurors rejecting laws they deem unjust -- some states even include the right in their constitutions -- but the appeal of jury nullification rests on whose ox is being gored prosecuted.
Liberals and libertarians anxious to see jurors use subterfuge and deception to free drug dealers and users have forgotten that the last wave of jury nullification made it very difficult to convict a white defendant accused of assaulting or killing a black victim in the American South as recently as the 1960s.
Byron De La Beckwith, who assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, hung two all-white juries, despite overwhelming evidence, until DA Bobby Delaughter shamed a modern jury into proving they were better than that: they convicted the murderer in 1994, 31 years after the crime.
The comments following Radley Balko's post are quite interesting and present a pretty fair picture of both sides of the nullification argument.
Posted by Mike Lief at March 7, 2008 09:38 AM
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Comments
The liberal left who believe that there is no point in fighting the drug war have clearly not stepped foot in my shoes and seen the things that I have seen.
Have they ever walked through a house where mom and dad are addicts and toddlers are forced to fend for themselves?? While mom and dad are jonesing for their next hit, what are the kids doing?
"We should just treat it as a health problem..." These people don't usually want help for their problem until the police and prosecutors get involved. I would love to see the stats on how many people get succesful treatment for meth addiction before their first arrest.
Drugs are an absolute scourge to society. We should be doing absolutely everything in our power to stop people from using in the first place (education and prevention), but once the person crosses that line and begins to use, there is absolutely a compelling state interest for the government to intervene.
If we were to legalize drugs, particularly meth, you would have way more people try it and you would end up with way more addicts. As a state we cannot afford the addicts we have now. Who is going to raise their kids?
Spare me the whole "you take the saved money from prosecution and put it into treatment..." It won't work. Meth makes people feel good (initially). They feel BAD when they don't have it. What will the incentive be to stay clean and sober if it is legal? This whole jury nullification thing is the same as legalizing.
I am disgusted.
Posted by: RW at March 8, 2008 04:18 PM
What they urge is anarchy and the breakdown of an orderly society. Although a huge portion California citizens would legalize marijuana, juries still largely convict in marijuana cases. Thankfully, respect for law and order still runs alive and well through the veins of society.
The true outrage in the war on drugs is that despite the blood and sweat of police officers, prosecutors, and the courts, the federal government has BETRAYED the American public by leaving our southern border wide open.
Narcotics pour over the Mexican border literally by the truckload. Securing our southern border with Mexico should be the highest immediate priority in the fight against the most serious illicit drugs (heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine).
Posted by: Bill H at March 8, 2008 07:34 PM