DEA doublespeak: Is marijuana a threat or not?

According to The Marshall Project, DEA Chief Chuck Rosenberg, a former prosecutor, called the claim that smoking marijuana has medicinal value (a notion embraced to some degree by 40 states) “a joke.” One day later, his DEA released an annual report suggesting that marijuana use is, literally, the last thing local police officials are worried about when it comes to drugs.
"What really bothers me is the notion that marijuana is also medicinal -- because it's not," Rosenberg said in a briefing to reporters. "We can have an intellectually honest debate about whether we should legalize something that is bad and dangerous, but don't call it medicine -- that is a joke," according to CBS News.
An increasing number of police officers around the United States are now saying that fighting marijuana is their lowest drug-related priority, according to a survey released earlier this week that formed part of the 2015 National Drug Threat Assessment Summary, the Washington Post reported.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration assessment asked a representative sample of 1,000 police officers around the country about what they saw as their biggest drug threats. All in all, in 2015, marijuana was the top choice of just 6% of officers and was dwarfed in significance by heroin (38%) and methamphetamine (33%). Prescription painkillers staked a middle spot with 15%, while cocaine edged out weed with 7%, according to News.Mic.

To visit The Marshall Project CLICK HERE

GateHouse: High Court probes bias in jury selection

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
November 6, 2015

In Georgia, as in most states, prosecutors and defense attorneys in capital cases can strike jurors during jury selection for just about any reason. A potential juror is chewing gum ... she’s out. A potential juror is a school teacher … gone. A potential juror is sleeping during the colloquy … out of here.

The process of striking a juror for any reason is referred to as a peremptory challenge. An unlimited number of potential jurors can be eliminated for cause — things like knowing the defendant or being related to the prosecutor.

There is one reason for which a trial attorney cannot use a peremptory challenge — race.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Foster v. Chatman, which questions if race was used to discriminate against potential jurors in a Georgia murder trial.

Timothy Foster was 18 years old when he was arrested for the murder of Queen Madge White, a 79-year-old widow and former elementary school teacher. Foster is African-American while the victim was white. According to prosecutors, “Foster broke into White’s home. He broke her jaw, coated her face with talcum powder, sexually molested her with a salad dressing bottle, and strangled her to death, all before taking items from her home.”

Turned in by his girlfriend, Foster admitted to the crime. But there were questions about his limited intellectual capacity and whether he had an accomplice.

When the case went to trial all of the black members of the jury pool were removed. Foster’s trial came only a year after the Court’s landmark decision in Batson v. Kentucky. Batson was intended to eliminate racial bias in jury selection.

The 1986 ruling set up a three-step process for testing complaints about race-based use of peremptory strikes.

First, the accused has to show membership in a specific racial group.

Second, prosecutors need to offer nonracial reasons for removing the juror.

Third, the judge must decide whether, taking everything into consideration, the defense proved a racial bias.

“The decision today will not end the racial discrimination that peremptories inject into the jury-selection process,” Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in Batson. “That goal can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.”

During jury selection in Foster’s case, one black juror was dismissed for cause, and prosecutors eliminated the other four with peremptory challenges, offering a variety of nonracial reasons accepted by the presiding judge.

Foster was convicted and sentenced to death. Georgia appellate courts upheld the conviction and sentence.

In 2006, nearly 20 years after his conviction, Foster’s lawyers obtained the prosecution team’s jury selection notes under the Georgia Open Records Act.

The name of each potential black juror was highlighted on four different copies of the jury list and the word “black” was circled next to the race question on questionnaires for the black prospective jurors. Three of the prospective black jurors were identified in notes as “B#1,” “B#2,” and “B#3.”

According to the Miami Herald, an investigator working for the prosecutors also ranked the black prospective jurors against each other in case “it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors.”

In Foster, the Court has been asked to consider whether information outside of the three-step Batson inquiry can help answer questions about whether the African-Americans were intentionally kept from the jury because of their race.

The Foster argument featured no discussion of limiting, or eliminating, peremptory challenges as Justice Marshall suggested in Batson and Justice Stephen G. Breyer reiterated in 2005. Unlikely as it may seem, perhaps the time has come to eliminate peremptory challenges and put to rest any issue of racial bias in jury selection.

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 at @MatthewTMangino.

Visit the column CLICK HERE

What? PA House passes broad mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders

An unlikely issue is finding consensus among liberals and conservatives, progressives and the tea party.
After decades of experimentation, mandatory minimum sentencing laws have failed in every respect.  For this reason, leaders of all political persuasions are moving public policy in this country away from mandatory minimums.
Unfortunately, some in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives are not keeping up with the times, wrote Pat Nolan the Director of the American Conservative Union Foundation's Center for Criminal Justice Reform and Julie Stewart the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums in a op-ed at PennLive.
Just one week after an organization of 130 major city police chiefs, sheriffs, state and federal prosecutors, and state attorneys general called on federal and state lawmakers to repeal mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, the Pennsylvania House rushed headlong in the opposite direction.
Without the benefit of a single hearing or the solicitation of any expert testimony, the House approved broad mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.
Had the House asked for any input, here's who they would have heard from: Americans for Tax Reform, ACLU, Koch Industries and Charles Koch Institute, NAACP, FreedomWorks, and our organizations.
To read more CLICK HERE

Nebraska seeks execution drugs without a death penalty law

Nebraska has hired Ben England, who also has been hired by other states, to help it import drugs for use in executions, according to BuzzFeed. Nebraska received a warning from the Food and Drug Administration that their attempt to purchase sodium thiopental from overseas suppliers violated federal law regarding the importation of drugs.
However, Nebraska doesn't have the death penalty. In May, Nebraska became the first conservative state in more than 40 years to abolish the death penalty, with lawmakers defying their Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, a staunch supporter of capital punishment who had lobbied vigorously against banning it, reported the New York Times.
Then a referendum to repeal a law that abolished the death penalty in Nebraska passed with enough approved signatures that it will now be on the ballot during the 2016 general election, according to the Omaha World-Herald.
The records in Nebraska, some of which are marked confidential and “attorney-client privileged,” show Nebraska’s Department of Corrections paid attorney Ben England $399 to register sodium thiopental with the FDA that a man named Chris Harris and his company, Harris Pharma, claims to be able to manufacture. But prior reports from BuzzFeed News call into question information listed on the registration.
To read more CLICK HERE

A significant majority of Americans think crime is on the rise

Seven in 10 Americans say there is more crime in the U.S. now than there was a year ago, according to Gallup. This figure is up slightly from the 63% who said so in 2014. Meanwhile, 18% say there is less crime, and 8% say the level of crime has stayed the same.
Since Gallup first began asking Americans in 1989 about their perceptions of crime, majorities generally have said crime had worsened compared with the previous year -- with more than 80% holding this view in the late 1980s and early '90s. Perceptions of greater crime fell over the course of the next decade as actual crime rates dropped, and reached a record low of 41% in 2001 after 9/11. By 2002, though, this figure was back to a majority, and ranged from 53% to 74% in the decade that followed.
Government data on actual crime rates in 2015 will not be released until next year, so it is not possible to know whether Americans' perceptions of rising crime this year reflect what is currently happening in the U.S. In many large cities across the country, violent crime rates have spiked in 2015, suggesting that national crime figures could be on the rise. News reports of this increased violence may account for the uptick in perceived violence in the latest poll.
To read more CLICK HERE

Utah Court refuses to delay execution by firing squad

A federal judge in Utah denied an appeal by 74-year-old death row inmate Ron Lafferty to place a hold on his federal case to challenge his execution by firing squad, reported JURIST. Lafferty is one of the longest-serving prisoners on death row in Utah and is scheduled to be executed by firing squad. Lafferty's counsel argued he was not legally competent when he chose to be executed by firing squad 30 years earlier, and this execution method violates his constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment . The judge held that the Supreme Court is yet to declare a state's chosen method of execution cruel and unusual. In March 2015, Utah Governor signed a bill [JURIST report] to restore the firing squad as a method of execution. Utah is the only state in the US that allows for death by firing squad if lethal injection drugs are not available. Friday's ruling still allows Lafferty to pursue his case in Utah state court.
Use of the death penalty has been a controversial issue throughout the US in 2015. In a JURIST op-ed, guest columnist John D. Bessler discusses new changes in the evolution of capital punishment.

Visit JURIST

Alcohol plays role in gun violence

Alcohol use plays a primary role in gun violence, wrote Deni Carise of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
A startling 48 percent of homicide offenders were reportedly under the influence of alcohol at the time of the offense, and 37 percent were intoxicated, according to an analysis by University of North Carolina researchers who reviewed more than 23 independent studies examining 8,265 homicide offenders in nine countries.
In the United States, guns are the leading cause of homicide and suicide.
"Both acute alcohol intoxication and chronic alcohol misuse are strongly associated with risk for committing firearm violence, whether that violence is directed at others or at oneself," said Garen J. Wintemute, founding director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis. He added that of the nearly 400,000 firearm-related U.S. deaths in 12 years, "it is probable that more than a third of these deaths involve alcohol."

To read more CLICK HERE