October 24, 2009
War On Drugs Department
What Is Law That Thou Art Mindful?
When I was on a criminal jury a few years ago, the judge impressed on us how important our job was. He made sure we took it seriously. Which is one of the reasons this bullshit makes me so angry:
The Minnesota Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, has now ruled that Bong Water (water which had been used in a water pipe) was a "mixture" of "25 grams or more" supporting a criminal conviction for Controlled Substance crime in the first degree. The crime is the most serious felony drug crime in Minnesota, with a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison for a first offense.
Let me make this clear: If you mix an illegal drug with an ounce of water, you can be charged with having 1 ounce of a drug mixture. Then, if you dilute the drug by adding another ounce of water, you can be charged with having a larger amount---2 ounces---of the drug mixture, even though in both cases you had the exact same amount of the actual drug.
I may not be applying the law correctly in my example, but the essence of this decision is that diluting the illegal drug with a legal substance increases the severity of the crime.
This is not an isolated example of bizarre legal thinking:
...a guy dumped his meth in the toilet. The cops scooped the water out, weighed it, and used the weight of the toilet water as the basis for his prosecution. Since they scooped more than 600 grams of water out of the toilet, that put him over the limit for a 1st degree felony.
The jury gave him 85 years in prison...
This is, the Court said, what the legislature intended.
This is mind-bogglingly stupid. Folks, it's basic math and logic. I mean, we teach children how to do fractions to avoid this kind of mistake. If this is what the legislature intended, then the legislature is an ass.
(Hat tip to Jamie for both examples.)
I've been following the foolishness that is the War On Drugs for decades, and this is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of. But this is not the first time I've heard of it. I can recall a case where the government wanted to use the weight of the container that held the drugs in calculating the sentence.
Tell me, the next time someone lectures me how important the rules of jury service are---don't discuss the case, let the judge decide what the law is, follow the evidence, don't visit the crime scene, don't nullify---why (other fear of punishment for contempt) shouldn't I tell them to go fuck themselves? If the legislature and the prosecutor and the judge can ignore something as fundamental as physical reality---hell, basic math---why should us jurors be impressed by any of their rules? Clearly, the rules don't really matter.
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The narcotics officer testified that users would later drink the bong water or shoot it up. I have a hard time believing this (please correct me if there are any readers who have ever drank or shot up bong water), and my first thought was they are ignoring the rules of, well, smelly bong water.
It sounds unlikely to me. Inhalation is a much faster way to get drugs into your system than ingestion. So if they wanted to take the drugs, they could have eliminated the bong water and inhaled directly. Injecting drugs is faster still, but if you want to inject drugs, you inject drugs, not bong water.
And even if people consume the water, that doesn't change the fact that the amount of the drug is still only a small fraction of the weight of the water.
"The narcotics officer testified that users would later drink the bong water or shoot it up."
And cops wonder why some people have absolutely no respect for them.
Imagine how easily the cops could inflate their arrest records if they nab someone who dumped their drugs into any of Minnesota's 10,000 lakes!
Jennifer, the supporters of these laws will say your example is crazy, without ever making the connection that their laws are crazy too.
Thanks for citing my blog article: http://wp.me/pAFjr-2g
This is the Minnesota Bong Water case from last Thursday. In Minneosta now, a trace amount of meth mixed in water means the weight of the water determines the severity of the criminal charge (not the weight of the drugs). The court has slipped on the sliipery slope offered by the prosecutors. This exposes the law as untenable. Public opinion is against the court's 4-3 decision. Dissenters have it right. Link to court decision is at beginning of blog article.
Keys include:
1. Criminalizing trace evidence cases have always been controversial for various reasons, including identification issues.
2. Criminalizing drugs in an unusable form or amount has been controversial, since the drugs are not usable by a user.
3. Proportionality of "the punishment should fit the crime." Now, apparently, one molecule of heroin in ten kilos of water, or anything, will be charged as ten kilos, with the penalty for ten kilos.
Solutions include:
1. Ask the legislature to repeal the criminal prohibition laws; and to forbid "trace amount" criminal charges.
2. Remember this case at election time. Vote! You can vote for or against Minnesota Supreme Court candidates, including incumbents. (See my blog for their names, short-link above.)
3. Jury Nullification, or the rule of jury lenity. Jurors have legal rights to acquit, despite the facts, despite the judges instructions on the law.
3. Remove all water sourced from rivers from your home and office, which these days contain illegal drugs - including toilets with water, in the meantime.
I'm adding windypundit.com to my blog roll.