Crime Without Consequence - Drug runners go free (No prosecution for illegal alien dealers in AZ)

ABC 15 ^ | 8-2-07 | Lisa Fletcher

[txdoda]

<1>The drugs must get through!

Yep, & "free passes" are given in half of AZ's border counties, apparently to 'mexicans only'.

So are the feds this generous all along our southern border ?? Are the 'mexicans only' pot smugglers set free in CA, NM, & TX ??

What about the northern border ?? I'm sure Canadian pot smugglers would like these 'free passes' also.

WHAT'S crossing our border while our BP agents are *busy* handing out these free passes ??

[Travis McGee]

The mind boggles.

[TKDietz]

It sounds like the BP agents are are actually busting these guys, but the federal and state prosecutors are “giving out free passes.” The pot is being confiscated. The prosecutors are just prosecuting the larger loads. Nothing in this article suggests that they are “giving free passes” on hard drugs or other more dangerous contraband. They’re just overwhelmed and having to prioritize.

The way to ease the workload for BP agents and prosecutors alike would be to legalize and regulate marijuana so they could spend their time on far more important issues.

[TKDietz]

As for whether these mules are set free in other areas, it does happen a lot. I think most areas at least try to get these guys to fork over a few grand before they ship them back to Mexico though. Some counties are making a lot of money this way. This may seem just terrible to you but the fact of the matter is that it does these counties little good to waste their time and money prosecuting these people, and incredibly expensive for the states to incarcerate them. And whether they a lot of people up or not, the loads will keep on coming. They always do. Drug mules are a dime a dozen, easily replaced by those who own the drugs and/or contract to transport them.

You also have to keep in mind that at least from the county prosecutor’s perspective, these drug mules are not just a tremendous threat to their communities compared to most of the other people arrested. The mules tend to be just passing through. Their loads are most likely destined for some other state far away from the counties the prosecutors serve. Taking these mules off the street will not decrease crime in their communities or otherwise make their communities safer. Some local lady writing hot checks is more of a burden on their community than someone passing through with a load of pot in the trunk of his car. They’re probably going to try to nail the guy with a load of meth, because that stuff is so bad and some of it might possibly end up making it back to their communities, but they’re not going to be nearly as worried about some low grade Mexican brickweed, which is probably already widely available and really cheap in their communities anyway. They’re going to have huge caseloads, like all state prosecutors and public defenders have, and it’s going to be a lot harder for a lot of them to justify wasting a lot of their limited time and resources messing with people who had they not been caught would have just driven through their counties without causing anyone there any problems. They’re going to focus their attention on people they catch selling drugs locally, mostly those selling the hard stuff though, and on all those others who are stealing, and raping, and committing violent acts, etc. in their communities.

[txdoda]

It sounds like the BP agents are are actually busting these guys, but the federal and state prosecutors are “giving out free passes.”

I understand BP is *attempting* to do their job.....it's "the higher-ups" handing out the free passes (to *mexicans* only....hmmmm...*discrimination ??)

The pot is being confiscated.

Apparently not enough to put a *small* dent into what's on our streets.

Nothing in this article suggests that they are “giving free passes” on hard drugs or other more dangerous contraband.

So you think the feds are handing out these "free passes" & "catch & release" to CITIZENS they catch in possession of *only* 499 LBS of marijuana ???

[TKDietz]

“Apparently not enough to put a *small* dent into what’s on our streets.”

Nothing new about that. Locking up a few more mules than they do now wouldn’t affect supply either. If you can drive a car, you can be a drug mule. There is a never ending supply of people willing to drive vehicles packed with dope for a fee. I’ve handled thousands of pounds worth of these cases as a public defender, and I’m in an area where these cases are prosecuted and these people do end up going to prison for several years. It matters not whether we send these people to prison. Sending them to prison does not reduce the amount of drugs available on the streets, nor does it increase the price of the dope. State and federal authorities do seize literally thousands of tons of marijuana every year. That probably does boost the price a little, although it’s still dirt cheap, especially this Mexican crap we’re talking about. In my opinion it would be better for us to keep the price up through taxation. We’d save a ton of money on enforcement and actually generate tax revenues to boot, and ultimately the government would have far more control over marijuana than it does now given that the black market is entirely unregulated.

“So you think the feds are handing out these “free passes” & “catch & release” to CITIZENS they catch in possession of *only* 499 LBS of marijuana ???”

I don’t know. This is the first I’ve heard of the under 500 lb. rule. It is not uncommon though for the feds to have threshold amounts like this. They want to focus on the big cases, and generally aren’t going to get involved in smaller stuff. Usually if the feds won’t prosecute a case the states will. According to the state prosecutor who was interviewed in this article the feds are referring new marijuana mules to him everyday and his office just cannot keep up. Do the feds “give free passes” to citizens they catch with under 500 pounds as well? I’d say they probably do send them to state authorities along with the Mexicans and the state authorities probably don’t treat them any different than they treat the Mexicans. Maybe they do give Mexicans more breaks, but I don’t see why they would do that. It makes no sense.

Where I work our prosecutors don’t care much for Mexicans and on average Mexicans are going to receive harsher treatment than whites for the same crimes. Blacks also are generally going to be looking at stiffer punishments than whites in similar cases where the defendants have similar criminal histories. That’s just the way it works. I don’t know why Mexicans would get special treatment from a state prosecutor or even a federal prosecutor.

Most of these mules are going to be Mexicans though. Mexicans, amazingly enough, control the Mexican marijuana market, as well as the smuggling routes into this country on the Mexican border and the biggest part of the wholesale distribution networks for Mexican marijuana in this country. I’ve probably got a couple of thousand pounds worth of these cases right now and as usual almost all the suspected mules are Mexicans or other Hispanics. We also get a few Jamaicans, and no small number of plain old white guys. I’m a couple of days from the Mexican border though and my guess is that down there an even greater portion of their marijuana mules are going to be Mexicans than we see here, and like I said the big majority of the people caught hauling loads of marijuana in my area are Mexicans or other Hispanics like Salvadorians, Guatemalans, etc. The point that I’m trying to make here is that it is probably going to look like Mexicans are getting all the breaks down there close to the border because almost all the people they catch down there hauling loads of pot are going to be Mexicans.

I’m not down on the border and maybe I’m wrong about this, but I sincerely doubt that what is going on in that area is that the feds and state/county prosecutors are trying to be extra nice to Mexican drug mules. It sounds to me like they’re just too swamped to prosecute all the smaller marijuana mule cases. Literally thousands and thousands of tons of pot come over that border every year and while law enforcement may only be stopping a tiny portion of the loads coming through, they’re arresting an awful lot of mules. They’re only going to have but so much space in their jails, so many prosecutors, so many defense attorneys, judges, etc. They can only do so much. They’re going to have to focus their resources on those criminals who are the greatest threat to their communities, and the guys who are driving down the highway in these prosecutors’ counties en route to some other part of the country are generally not going to be much or any threat to the communities these prosecutors serve. It sounds like it’s becoming necessary for them to make these low priority cases.

[Tunehead54]

Ping! Say you have a number for Justino anymore? ;-)

[monday]

“but a lot of times I wonder why we don’t just tell them to come up with several thousand bucks and let them go ..”

“The mules never have any money.”

Does not compute....

[TKDietz]

You know what they do in my area? They let people buy better deals. It’s not fair, but the more money people come up with, especially these out of state drug mules, the better the deal they’re going to get. A lot of them can never come up with anything. A lot of them though can come up with a few grand if it will save them from a few years in prison. It won’t be the mule’s money generally. It will come from his brother, his mother, his aunt and/or uncle, friends, etc. Several people will pitch in to help the guy out. I’ve seen this happen a lot of times and in fact too many times I’ve had to be the one calling all these friends and relatives to coordinate the money raising efforts for my clients who are in jail. Sometimes they can buy their way out of going to prison, often they’ll just be buying a few years off of the sentence they would have gotten. Some of the money will go toward fines, and a lot of it will go as asset forfeitures to the prosecutor’s office and the law enforcement agency that made the bust, and often a good chunk of it is paid as “restitution” to our local Drug Task Force even though they aren’t the ones picking these guys off on the highway. These people usually have several months to raise the money. It takes that long to get a trial date after their arrest. If they still don’t have all the money in time to plead before the trial date, we can usually get the case continued a time or two to give them more time to raise money.

It does work out though that sometimes some fairly big drug dealer types get away with slaps on the wrists if they can come up with enough money, money that may very well be coming from organized crime, while at the same time we’ll see naive bumpkins who might be generally decent people who agreed to do something stupid because they were desperate for money will end up getting ungodly sentences because they can’t come up with any money. That isn’t fair. I’m a public defender though so my clients aren’t generally the ones coming up with huge sums of money to buy their way out of serious trouble. If they can come up with a few grand though I can get them pretty darned good deals. Our prosecutors know the score and will milk the rich cocaine smuggler with the high priced attorneys for an awful lot more money than he’ll get from my clients and he’s not going to give that guy who is forking out major cash a much better deal than he’s giving my client who just comes up with a few grand. That this type of person gets a better deal than my clients at all kind of sucks though, because odds are he’s a much bigger player in organized crime than my clients. In the grand scheme of things though these guys don’t matter to the prosecutor. They were just passing through. Whether they go away for a long time matters not to him. He’d rather they pay lots of money to supplement his budget and make him the hero with the county treasurer and the various law enforcement agencies who share in the wealth.

[monday]

“Whether they go away for a long time matters not to him. He’d rather they pay lots of money to supplement his budget and make him the hero with the county treasurer and the various law enforcement agencies who share in the wealth.”

This is the reason for the war on drugs. It’s not about keeping drugs off the streets, or any sort of justice. It’s about money and power. It corrupts DAs, judges, LEOs and politicians even if they aren’t directly on the take from drug syndicates, and many of them are. They all belong in jail more than the people they are prosecuting.