Quick Hits (page 4)
New D.A. and sheriff are expected to take less rigid stances on pot and forestry issues
By: Emily Gurnon (The Times)
Each summer, southern Humboldt County begins to look like military-occupied territory. Low-flying helicopters buzz fields, land on private property and disgorge cargoes of camouflaged sheriff's deputies in search of marijuana plantations.
That kind of activity -- seen by many as belligerent and oppressive -- along with a perceived lack of interest in communicating with the public, may have contributed to the decision of voters in this North Coast county to boot out the incumbent sheriff and the longtime district attorney.
"You lose goodwill with your community when you do stuff like that," said Paul Gallegos, the new district attorney, referring to the helicopter raids.
In an upset last March, Gallegos, a private defense attorney with no political experience, ousted Dist. Atty. Terry Farmer, who had won the last five elections beginning in 1982. Gallegos took office January 6th.
The election also ended the tenure of Sheriff Dennis Lewis, who lost by an overwhelming margin to an underling, former Sheriff's Department Chief Deputy Gary Philp.
Gallegos and Philp represented, for many voters, new blood in a system that had become unresponsive and inefficient. Gallegos campaigned on a progressive platform, promising a more considered approach to medical marijuana cases. He also pledged to treat both sides equally in conflicts between timber companies and protesters, to eliminate waste in the department and to focus resources on domestic violence, elder and child abuse and the methamphetamine scourge.
Gallegos, 40, attributes his victory, in part, to his endorsement by the local chapter of the Green Party and its volunteers.
"They gave me people, they phone-banked, they were on the streets with signs, they brought a lot of energy and commitment," Gallegos said. "They were very instrumental to me."
Environmentalists are a force to be reckoned with in Humboldt County. Home to the Headwaters Forest and the state's famous redwoods, the county has considerably more registered Democrats than Republicans (44% to 30%) and a Green Party registration of 7%.
Farmer is not without connections: His wife is a county supervisor, and California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer made a campaign stop on his behalf. He told reporters after the election that he perhaps had not taken Gallegos seriously, but then "nobody took him seriously." Gallegos won with 52% of the vote.
Neither Farmer nor Lewis could be reached for comment.
For his part, Philp, 51, attributed his win to what he called Lewis' lack of leadership and failure to communicate with the public and the media. It didn't hurt Philp that Lewis barely campaigned.
Lewis came into office in 1994 as an outsider, vowing to clean up after outgoing Sheriff Dave Renner, who was later imprisoned for misappropriating county funds. But Lewis appeared out of touch with Humboldt County voters on certain issues -- medical marijuana being a prime example.
The former sheriff, who retired in September after losing to Philp, made headlines in 2001 when he refused to return a single ounce of pot to a medical marijuana patient, even after being ordered to do so by a judge.
"You have to look at the reasonableness of what you do," said Philp, who won 73% of the vote. "There are so many other things you could be focusing your energy on."
Gallegos agreed. The sheriff and the D.A. are supposed to enforce California law, he said, including Proposition 215, the medical marijuana initiative that lets a patient with a doctor's prescription smoke pot to relieve pain.
Enforcement of that law has been especially tricky in recent months because federal statutes still ban any use or possession of marijuana and a federal Drug Enforcement Administration crackdown has put agents at odds with local authorities.
Lewis' action "seemed like a concerted effort to defeat and challenge the passage" of Proposition 215, Gallegos said. "That's just not the way it's supposed to work."
Another issue that stuck with voters -- though it did not prevent Lewis' reelection in 1998 -- was his decision in 1997 to daub pepper spray on the eyelids of timber activists. That incident brought the county international media attention and led to the perception, among some, that Lewis and his deputies were thugs.
Philp said his approach is to "enforce the law, and remain as impartial as we can." Deputies will continue to arrest protesters who trespass on private lands, but they are not timber companies' private security, he said. "We're not here to take sides."
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Tan 'n' Trends
Growin' Our Own (page 4)
Busted, Japanese style
By: Scot Free
My rear derailleur had completely ripped off from a hard month on the trail and train. I had to get off and push. It was a good time for a smoke so I parked in a near by kiddy park beside an elevated freeway entrance, climbed the slide and hit a bowl of my home grown hash plant from a glass blunt, lightening the perspective of my predicament but demonstrating how difficult it was to find a place to smoke in this concentrated urban compound, the paranoia was distracting. I was spoiled by the past month of instant access to isolated mountain trails and streams where I could spark up in communion at will.
Someone recommended a Reggae club on the third floor so I locked my bike and went up to check it out. The place was just closing so I packed a bowl and passed it around to the DJs and hangers on to make friends. Some were impressed by the bud being relatively rare in Japan, and offered to buy it but for the same reason - I declined. I did express an interest in a possible trade for shroomz but they laughed and said they'd show me where I could get them over the counter for about 5$ a gram (but have since been criminalized as of June 20002). Another one offered to introduce me to a famous tattoo artist I'd wanted to meet, I began to get the feeling I was going to get along just fine here. Little did I know I would be spending the next two months in a sour smelling 8x12 cage with two other poor stinkers less than 500 meters away.
Omitting the details to protect the guilty, in short I lost my bag containing all the conflicting combined values of my passport, travelers' checks and 6.gs of manicured home grown hash plant buds and while backtracking to look for it somebody pointed me out to police who had it at the station. I was stuck if they did have it they'd find me eventually. Once there they quickly assembled an on the spot chemical analysis and as soon as the medium turned purple (positive for THC) they slapped the cuffs on and started patting me down. It didn't help when they soon fished my glass pipe and film can I used for more convenient access out of my pocket, with my prints all over them.
I was taken in the custody of at least 6 guards, with my hands cuffed in front of me, by elevator to an interrogation room as they joked and bragged to the uninvolved officers and inmates about confidential details of my case. I indignantly refused to cooperate. I demanded the American Embassy be notified. Used to the western process of denial, I continued to indignantly scold the cops about their unprofessional gloating over my unfortunate circumstance this sadistic sense of humor came to characterize the ancient malicious machinations of oppression closing in around me. While they went through their own channels for information and I grudgingly confirmed the superfluous facts of my identity.
I began to understand through a series of inept interpreters that no contact would be allowed and I would be held incommunicado for as long as I denied the charges and/or 20 days had passed without sufficient evidence and it was already too late for that. After a couple of hours nit picking interrogation and posturing stand off I was led down the glass brick corridor with a rope tied around my waist and through the hand cuffs on my wrists to the jail. In the ante room/office of the jail ward my cuffs and rope were removed and my clothes checked for property. Then I was told to strip where I stood in the center of the room. One guard stood next to me while 2 detectives and 2 more guards looked on in voyeuristic delight barking repeatedly, "everything, everything" and laughing from across the room. As soon as I got my shorts half way down they seemed to squirm uncomfortably and quickly told me to redress.
In the cell the shock and deprivation was beginning to make me dizzy and nauseous, producing something like seasickness in reverse. The small square rubber mat floor and the whole cramped cubical felt like it was pitching and falling on the waves of the open ocean. Bobby parole violation - amphetamines, early 40s, chubby and enthusiastic - reminded me of The Skipper, and Hama - car thief - was a dead ringer for Gilligan (told you I was an intellectual). His well meaning but dangerously stupid anecdotes and advice inspired awe while quite frankly scaring the shit out of me. He characterized the paradox of the socially ostracized and repressed who doggedly seek the paternal attentions of the sadistic manipulative authorities. Every wise crack attempting to comfort me seemed like a malicious trick trying to lull me into complacent acceptance of this nightmare, every outburst of defeated laughter seemed to mock me in the celebration of my captivity and helpless subjugation. As I stared out across the guard station I saw the calendar on the opposite wall showing a crew cut jock sitting on the beach staring, brain dead, out to sea. The calendar read "No Reason, Coca Cola". The past year has only been a variation on this theme.
About 8 PM the head sergeant and his underling marched up to each cell militaristically and barked out the prisoners' numbers, while the latter are to be seated on their knees at this point to confirm their presence with an earnest, "Hai! Oyasumi Nasai" (good morning) or "Ohaio Gozaimasu" (good night). After roll call we were allowed reading until 9:45. Then lights were dimmed except for the bright toilet light coming through the full length window in the toilet stall wall, a precaution against concealed sex or violence between prisoners, and the rounded corner of the door, a precaution against suicide by hanging. With nothing to read and too much to think about I rolled over in despair on my futon in the toilet doorway and recalled the sounds of the insects and raccoons of the forests of Hokkaido that had surrounded me only a few nights before until they filled my head.
7AM - barking guards and slamming doors greet the new day, consistently the worst time of the day, awakening from a dream of psychic realization my eyes were burned by the bars and the metal grates strangled my soul. We stumbled up to fold our bedding and blink at the floor in stunned, dumbfounded horror from the time wake up was called until the cell number is barked and the door is opened for us to file through the gallery of leering, deformed guards and miserable inmates down the hall to put away our futons. On the way back we collected a broom, dustpan, bucket and rag to clean the cell. The unofficial rule was that the new guy cleaned the toilet, which my predecessor taught me to do with a patronizing religious obsession.
After swabbing up the skin flakes, hair and grime from the rubber mats and the toilet, the cleaning stuff was taken out by the first in line to use the sink positioned on our side of the guards control panel. At this time all available guards, twice the usual number showing up for the shift change, filed in and took up positions around the ward and gawked at us like fat stupid tourists at a zoo, beaming with vindictive glee in the secret confidence of the brotherhood of corruption, definitely one of the most punishing aspects of the experience that these low lives actually had any control over me.
Since my arrival Bobby seemed eerily well versed in the details of my case. According to him the weed itself was so unusual to them they I suspected I was either the producer or close to the distributor which is a mandatory 7 to 12 years, or production and/or possession for personal use - a mandatory 1 to 5 years, but definitely beyond simple possession of 1g or less and/or evidence of use being more or less tolerated with a warning and probation. If I couldn't convince them it was a case of personal use it would be a recommended 7 years with a probable 2 years served, 10 years probation and mandatory deportation. He repeatedly urged me to tell them what they wanted to hear as soon as possible, that every hour could conceivably turn into another 10 days, and a more severe investigation and sentencing.
I didn't know if I could trust this guy, was he a narc or just naive? After all, the advice I was able to put together between him and the more experienced guards and detectives proved to be far more reliable than anything I ever got from my lawyer, whom I couldn't contact until they were satisfied. As I tried to sound out what they thought they knew or suspected through cautious probing, he kept consulting the guards while swearing that the corrections and investigations departments were separate and confidential by law, but it was obvious my details were leaking like crazy from somewhere. Having grown up being brainwashed about Miranda Rights you can imagine how my stomach was turning and my head was reeling while feeling my way along through legal Hara Kiri.
The best I could hope for was a suspended 1 year sentence, 3 years probation and a separate investigation and review of my visa status by immigration under the recently revised anti-narcotics act. Any foreign national indicted for a narcotics violation, including that of the cannabis control act, must apply to the immigration department for special permission to remain in Japan, not required for theft and assault cases. So I would have had a much better chance and probably more respect if I had assaulted and or robbed someone. The general understanding was that 1st time offenders who cooperated tended to get suspended sentences, so against all reason I signaled my willingness to make a formal confession.
It was at the frenzy of moronic guards during our morning tour of the sink that I began to realize a number of the more asinine guards making concerted lewd implications and genitally oriented gestures focused on me reminding me of the nervous disorganized strip search I'd endured. I shrugged it off at first, but this perverted attention would soon become inescapable. Fat, prurient guards made lingering unprofessional inspections of my anatomy through the shower door and disseminated derogatory rumors and nicknames among the more disturbed and desensitized guards and career prisoners that quickly built up into a hysterical craze of gossip and defamation rooted in the repressed sexuality and xenophobic complexes of the dominant sadistic psychological types that continue to hound me even at work and in public to this day through the magic of 'community policing'.
'By Doug Struck ,Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 3, 2000; Page A23; TOKYO, March 2 The Japanese police, once considered the model of an ear-to-the-neighborhood, local constabulary, have been caught in a succession of Keystone Kops blunders.
Yuko Sekiguchi resigned following scandal in the Kanagawa police station in Yokohama, where accusations included sexual harassment, attempted extortion and cover-up of drug use by an officer. The department even had a manual on how to hide misdeeds."
And so I remained in retarded animation for the next 40 days except for trips to the prosecutor, a medieval process requiring us to wait all day in a cold and crowded dungeon in the basement of the courthouse, then be transferred to a central detention house. My cellmates, about 10 in this 24 sq ft straw mat cell, were generally more mature and mellow than the last tortured, stir-crazy crowd. There was an obviously simple but rigid hierarchy here based on direct succession of arrival, bed and seating position, and chores with the senior inmate directly responsible to the attending guards.
I was almost comforted to find that the head inmate was in for growing bud. He was busted after a fire supposedly broke out in a specially rented apartment that was in his name was found to be full of I forget how many bubble-berry plants. He told me about Cannabis Culture and Pot-TV, apparently his seeds were from Marc Emory Direct. He was definitely a connoisseur. I didn't know half of the strains he was talking about. While he was officially in charge, there were three syndicate guys who definitely held sway and never did explain just why they were there. There were a couple of financial frauds, drunk drivers, a sexual assault and a scooter thief as well.
We basically went through the the same routine there as described before, but mostly within the confines of that room with the bedding stored against the walls and a cubbyhole/shelf for each prisoner's stuff, which had to remain in a certain order. We only left the cell en mass for showers and optional exercise every other day, except weekends when we'd be marched together with 2 or 3 other cells down to a barren gravel court yard where we were stood in formation and barked through a few stretches and allowed to run around the perimeter in one direction for the next 20 minutes and/or cut our nails at a bench in one corner of the yard. During this time we were still not allowed to look directly at one another or speak to each other. I took this opportunity to get outside but spent the time walking slowly around the yard examining the weeds defiantly growing in the margins.
There was another rule about announcing intent to defecate, as the French windowed toilet stall in this older building was well ventilated for 2 hours a day. Vintage cheesy muzak was blasted at afternoon rest period and at bed time. It sounded like they hadn't changed the sound track since they built the place - I'd say in the late 60's. It made me imagine all the miserable characters who had stared up at the same dim ceiling and the way the outside world had changed since then. It would convey an excellent sense of the abject absurdity of the place if only I were allowed to take a video.
The courtroom itself was literally Alice in Wonderland. I stood a whole head above the judge when he was seated. All the rotten little clerks and ciphers - bloated, drooling, scaly and anemic - crouched around the bench regarding one another with toothy spineless grins seething with vindictive satisfaction. My lawyer had told me that if I agreed to allow students to be present at the hearing I might receive kinder consideration, but now as I sensed their voyeuristic excitement, I doubted the validity of the concept. I tried to keep repenting eyes focused on the judge at all times as the lawyer advised but he, the interpreter and the judge were spread out across the room so I never knew who was talking or what was being said exactly as I did my best to acknowledge guilt with appropriate timing to maintain the appearance of sincerity but the judge just told me I looked ill.
At one point the pale, shriveled, vehement little prosecuting attorney produced the evidence attempting to hold it near enough that it would appear that I could see it clearly but something looked weird so I asked for a closer inspection. With every succeeding report the official amount had gradually decreased from 7+ grams to 6. 3. Even if it took that much for lab analysis that wouldn't change the original offence but the can looked fuller than I remembered and the contents stringy and dark. As it was held closer for me I took the liberty of poking through it and sure enough there was a big fan leaf in there. I manicured this my self and the bud may have been a little airy but I wouldn't bother packing any thing like that around.
It looked strangely like the unfamiliar leaf offered for my inspection and opinion as a conversation piece by my doting detectives a few weeks earlier during one of the bogus interrogations they'd pulled just for entertainment. This evidence was inadmissible by American standards. I had absolutely not anticipated this situation nor received any advice on how to consult my lawyer at this point for any reason. He was seated at a separate table to the side of the room while I was stuck out alone in the middle with no confidential access, while he motioned to me to answer in the affirmative. I didn't know how to deal with that here but I was sure it would involve waiting in jail until it was sorted out or just compounded their corruption. For all I know my lawyer and the prosecutor had already smoked mine together.
I stood before the crusty, withered, sour faced old judge who looked to be more in doubt of himself than any of the arguments. When signaled I addressed him with the most regretful expression I could muster and stated my intent to rejoin my life and to distance myself from all forms of drug abuse and any further dealings with the criminal justice system. The posturing puppet prosecutor barked his recommendation for 1 year in prison and 1 year probation. After a prolonged volley of ritual defamations the judge gave the odd sentence of 10 months suspended and 2 years probation. The standard alternative was a year suspended and 3 on probation. It seemed like he shaved off just enough to cut me some leverage with immigration but I couldn't guess that over a year later I would still be under the specter of deportation and general defamation. This time I left through the back door without handcuffs but realizing that the only way to avoid incarceration in this society was to act and think like a prisoner anyway.
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Pipeline (page 4)
Court declares state's civil forfeiture funding scheme unconstitutional
By: Institute for Justice
New Jersey's method of financing police and prosecutors through civil forfeiture is unconstitutional, Superior Court Judge G. Thomas Bowen of Salem County ruled in his opinion.
Under New Jersey's civil forfeiture law (N.J.S.A 2C:64-6a) prosecutors and police had been entitled to keep the money and property confiscated from individuals through the state's civil forfeiture law, thus giving them a direct financial stake in the outcome of forfeiture efforts. The court ruled that this provision violates the Due Process clauses of the U.S. and New Jersey constitutions.
"We are thrilled with the court's ruling," said Scott Bullock, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest law firm that litigated the New Jersey case. "The decision will ensure that police and prosecutors make decisions on the basis of justice, not on the potential for profit."
From 1998 to 2000, New Jersey police and prosecutors collected an astonishing nearly $32 million in property and currency through the application of the civil forfeiture law. During that same period, on average, close to 30 percent of the discretionary budgets of county prosecutor offices came from civil forfeiture proceeds. As the judge recognized in his opinion, forfeiture money has been used for "rent for a motor pool crime scene facility, office furniture, telecommunications and computer equipment, automobile purchase, fitness and training equipment purchase, a golf outing, food, including food for seminars and meetings, and expenses of law enforcement conferences, at various locations."
As the court further declared: "In theory and in practice, there is no limitation upon the motivation for enlargement to which a county prosecutor is subject in deciding upon seizure of property . . . . This court concludes, that the augmentation of the county prosecutors' budgets, . . . provides to those in prosecutorial functions financial interests which are not remote as to escape the taint of impermissible bias in enforcement of the laws prohibited by the Due Process clauses of the New Jersey and U.S. Constitution."
By ruling the statute unconstitutional, the decision affects every county in New Jersey. And the decision could prove a harbinger of future challenges to laws in other states. David Smith, an Alexandria, Va., attorney who has written a treatise on forfeiture laws and is a former deputy chief of the Department of Justice's asset forfeiture office declared last month, "This is the single most important civil forfeiture case being litigated anywhere." Several other states and the federal forfeiture law also permit police and prosecutors to keep forfeited property and proceeds.
"We will challenge laws in other states to guarantee that the due process rights of property owners are protected when confronted with civil forfeiture," Bullock added.
The case, State of New Jersey v. One 1990 Ford Thunderbird, was led by perhaps an unlikely crusader, Carol Thomas of Millville in southern New Jersey. Her case arose in 1999 when Thomas' then 17-year-old son used her Thunderbird without her knowledge and consent to sell marijuana to an undercover officer. Her son was arrested and punished, but that did not end the matter. The State still went after the car by filing a civil forfeiture action because the car was involved in illegal activity. Ironically, at the time of her son's arrest, Thomas was a seven-year veteran officer with the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office. Thomas has subsequently left the sheriff's department and decided to fight abusive forfeiture laws.
In 2001, the Institute for Justice scored a first-round victory in this case when it secured the release of Thomas' car. The judge allowed Thomas' challenge to New Jersey's unconstitutional profit motive to continue, and now the judge has declared the New Jersey statute to be unconstitutional.
The Institute for Justice is a libertarian public interest law firm. Through strategic litigation, training, communications and outreach, the Institute for Justice advances a rule of law under which individuals can control their own destinies as free and responsible members of society. It litigates to secure economic liberty, school choice, private property rights, freedom of speech and other vital individual liberties, and to restore constitutional limits on the power of government. In addition, it trains law students, lawyers and policy activists in the tactics of public interest litigation to advance individual rights. Through these activities the Institute challenges the ideology of the welfare state and illustrates and extends the benefits of freedom to those whose full enjoyment of liberty is denied by government. The Institute was founded in September 1991 by William Mellor and Clint Bolick.
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