GateHouse: Death for drug dealers not so far-fetched

Matthew T. Mangino

GateHouse Media

March 16, 2018

President Donald Trump wants to impose the death penalty on drug dealers. Death for drug dealers is the focus of a brutal campaign by Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte whose “drug war” has, according to Human Rights Watch, resulted in more than 12,000 extrajudicial deaths.

I’m not sure that Trump wants armed militia cruising the streets, knocking-off reputed drug dealers, but is anyone ever really sure what President Trump has planned?

In a recent campaign speech in Pittsburgh, President Trump said, “These people are killing our kids and they’re killing our families, and we have to do something.” He went on to say, “I think it’s a discussion we have to start thinking about (the death penalty for drug dealers). I don’t know if we’re ready — I don’t know if this country’s ready for it.”

However, if Trump intends to pursue the death penalty for drug dealers through the criminal court system his idea may not be so far-fetched.

The death penalty has been exclusively for those convicted of first-degree murder since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

The Supreme Court cited evolving standards of decency to outlaw the death penalty for the rape of an adult in 1977. In 2008, the court found that there is a distinction between first-degree murder and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, even child rape.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in 2008, “As it relates to crimes against individuals, though, the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim’s life was not taken.”

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death penalty website, two states — Florida and Missouri — have the death penalty for drug dealers on their books. The federal government also has the death penalty for trafficking large quantities of drugs.

The Trump administration is studying a proposal that could allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty for drug dealers as a way to address the opioid crisis. Opioids killed nearly 64,000 people in 2016, and the crisis is straining local health and emergency services.

According to the Washington Post, people familiar with the discussions said that the president’s Domestic Policy Council and the Department of Justice are studying the possibility of making trafficking large quantities of fentanyl — a powerful synthetic opioid — a capital crime because even small amounts of the drug can be fatal. The Trump administration’s authority would be limited to federal law and the federal government has been squeamish about executions. There have been only three executions by the federal government in the last 55 years.

In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty laws in place were unconstitutional because there were no rational, objective standards for when the death penalty would be imposed.

Four years later, the Court found that Georgia’s amended death penalty statute was “judicious” and “careful.” The new statute provided for a bifurcated trial — one to determine guilt and one for sentencing. During the sentencing, or penalty phase, specific jury findings of “aggravating circumstances” were necessary to impose the death penalty. The Eighth Amendment violations disappeared, and the death penalty was once again constitutional.

How would the death penalty look for a nonhomicide offense?

Once a defendant is convicted of drug trafficking the jury would then move into the penalty phase of trial — juries must make death penalty decisions — or impose some other penalty provided by statute.

The whole idea of imposing the death penalty on drug dealers comes as interest in the death penalty wanes. There have been only 47 executions nationwide in the last three years. Support for the death penalty has fallen below 50 percent for the first time in the modern era of the death penalty.

Imposing the death penalty on drug dealers will be a stretch, but probably has a better chance of happening than the erection of a wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Miami is now one of the safest cities in America

Just jumped on a plane to Miami, Florida. I bet you didn't know this--Miami, once labeled “Paradise Lost” by Time magazine because of a searing homicide rate fueled by a crippling drug trade, is now one of the safest major cities in the U.S. when it comes to gun related deaths.

According to the Miami Herald, of the 26 homicides over the first six months of this year in Miami, only 16 were due to gunfire, records obtained from the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner and the city’s police department show.

Both numbers represent historic lows for a city that often racked up close to 300 homicides during the 1980s and which has seen those numbers drop by about 75 percent or more the past three years.

To read more CLICK HERE

Gang Membership on the Rise

The gang problem in the United States is growing and there are an estimated 1.4 million members in some 33,000 gangs, according to the federal government, reported the Associated Press.

Gangs are collaborating with transnational drug trafficking organizations to make more money and are expanding the range of their illicit activities, engaging in mortgage fraud and counterfeiting as well as trafficking in guns and drugs, according to the national gang threat assessment for 2011.

The gang member estimate of 1.4 million was up from 1 million two years ago, a 40 percent increase, but the report attributed the rise in part to improved reporting by law enforcement agencies, reported the Associated Press.

White-collar crime is an increasing focus for gangs. The report cited the arrest of a member in a Los Angeles gang called Florencia 13 for operating a lab that manufactured pirated video games.

Gang membership is increasing most significantly in the Northeast and Southeast regions of the country and many communities are experiencing an increase in ethnic-based gangs such as African, Asian and Caribbean gangs, said the report, which is based on federal, state and local law enforcement data.

To read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-govt-estimates-gang-membership-at-14m-in-33000-gangs-collaboration-by-gangs-rising/2011/10/21/gIQASKzu3L_story.html

Former Mexican President Calls for Legalization of Drugs

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox,a member of the same conservative National Action Party as current President Felipe Calderón, was president between 2000 and 2006 and was a staunch U.S. ally in the war against drugs.

Newsweek is reporting that Fox has called for the legalization of drugs. Fox said "radical prohibition strategies have never worked." Fox is falling in line with a number of Latin American leaders who have declared the war on drugs a failure.

"Legalization does not mean that drugs are good," he wrote in an Internet posting, according to Reuters, "but we have to see [legalization of the production, sale, and distribution of drugs] as a strategy to weaken and break the economic system that allows cartels to earn huge profits."

Last year three former Latin American leaders—Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, César Gaviria of Colombia, and Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico opined that drugs should be legalized and regulated.

To read more: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/10/ex-mexican-president-adds-his-voice-to-calls-to-legalize-drugs.html

The Cost of the War on Drugs

In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon said, "Public enemy No. 1 in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive. So began the war on drugs. Forty years later the United States has spent over a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) and even the current drug czar Gil Kerlikowske told the Associated Press, "In the grand scheme, it has not been successful."

President Nixon's first drug-fighting budget was $100 million. Now it's $15.1 billion, 31 times Nixon's amount even when adjusted for inflation.

Using Freedom of Information Act requests, archival records, federal budgets and dozens of interviews with leaders and analysts, the Associated Press tracked where that money went, and found that the United States repeatedly increased budgets for programs that did little to stop the flow of drugs. In 40 years, taxpayers spent more than:

_ $20 billion to fight the drug gangs in their home countries. In Colombia, for example, the United States spent more than $6 billion, while coca cultivation increased and trafficking moved to Mexico — and the violence along with it.

_ $33 billion in marketing "Just Say No"-style messages to America's youth and other prevention programs. High school students report the same rates of illegal drug use as they did in 1970, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says drug overdoses have "risen steadily" since the early 1970s to more than 20,000 last year.

_ $49 billion for law enforcement along America's borders to cut off the flow of illegal drugs. This year, 25 million Americans will snort, swallow, inject and smoke illicit drugs, about 10 million more than in 1970, with the bulk of those drugs imported from Mexico.

_ $121 billion to arrest more than 37 million nonviolent drug offenders, about 10 million of them for possession of marijuana. Studies show that jail time tends to increase drug abuse.

_ $450 billion to lock those people up in federal prisons alone. Last year, half of all federal prisoners in the U.S. were serving sentences for drug offenses.

These expenditures do not include the indirect cost of lost productivity due to drug abuse, medical costs for long term medical problems, residual cost of broken families
and blighted neighborhoods. The costs associated with those victimized by drug users looking for cash. The families devastate by the loss of life in the battles for drug turf.

The costs associated with the war on drugs and the devastation left in it's wake are staggering.

To read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iLZNYd6C9SGpa2oeiZIqT-HKVrCQD9FMCM103

When Murder Matters in Mexico

When does murder matter in Mexico? When it touches America. Last weekend's killing in Juarez of Lesley Enriquez, who worked at the U.S. Consulate, her husband, Arthur Redelfs, a corrections officer in El Paso, and Jorge Alberto Salcido Ceniceros, whose wife also worked at the consulate, brought murder too close to home for many Americans.

In the resort city of Acapulco, 17 people were murdered last Saturday including six police officers. The strife continues throughout Mexico as more than 50,000 Mexican army troops fight the major drug cartels for control of Mexico's future.

Juarez is just across the border from El Paso, Texas. Although El Paso has one of the lowest homicide rates of any big city in the U.S., there were only 13 murders in 2009, Juarez is one of the most deadly cities in the world.

Beto O'Rourke, an member of the El Paso city council, told the Houston Chronicle the killings might finally bring necessary attention to the violence.

“It's tragic and incredibly sad,” he said. “But the brutality and tragedy we saw this weekend are nothing new. What is new is that the killings involved people who work at the consulate, which is the symbol of American power and prestige.”

The volume and brutality of the murders in Mexico might be shocking to most residents of the U.S., but murder is no longer shocking in Juarez or just about any other city in Mexico. This past weekend alone, 28 people were killed in Juarez. Over the past two years, more than 4,000 people have been killed in Juarez's violent drug war. There have been 18,000 drug related murders throughout Mexico since President Felipe Calderon began his all out war against drug cartels.

To read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6914721.html