Posted on 03/13/2003 8:08:49 AM PST by wildbill
Slain girl's mom files $30 million lawsuit
Claiming federal agents had no reason to use deadly force against her daughter, the mother of a slain 14-year-old girl filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the two agents who she claims fired at Ashley Villarreal. The complaint seeks $30 million and potentially offers the most public review of the Feb. 9 encounter between the teenager and agents who were waiting to arrest her father, cocaine-trafficking suspect Joey Villarreal.
The case was filed in federal court a day after authorities asserted that Joey Villarreal knew about the stakeout and that his daughter was acting as a decoy when she drove along the street with her headlights off.
When investigators tried to stop her sedan, officials said, she rammed their unmarked vehicles and accelerated toward agents, who opened fire without being able to see who was at the wheel.
A lawyer for the girl's mother, Deborah De Luna Villarreal, dismissed this account as "the government laying out an alternate reality."
"I think there is a grave danger that reality is going to be distorted dramatically," said the attorney, Marynell Maloney. "How is a 14-year-old girl responsible to such a degree that she should be killed?"
The lawsuit is directed at two agents who, it asserts, are believed to have fired at the car: Bill Swierc and Jeff Kinnaman. The agents could not be reached for comment.
Authorities have not said who fired the fatal shot.
Maloney said a similar complaint against the agents' employer, the Drug Enforcement Administration, is in the works. Lawyers for Joey Villarreal have indicated they are preparing their own civil suit.
Should the case go to trial, it would offer possibly the most public review of the shooting at the intersection of South San Joaquin and Motes streets.
While the DEA and the San Antonio Police Department are separately examining the incident, it is unclear whether their findings will be released in detail.
A DEA spokesman, noting that the reviews still are under way, said it would be inappropriate for the agency to comment on the lawsuit.
The narrative described in the lawsuit says Ashley believed the agents were gang members. It also faults investigators for not seeing the girl climb into the car, emphasizing that minutes earlier she and a friend had put garbage cans on the stoop.
"This is a girl who's carrying out the trash, standing out there in the streetlight, and they're shooting her dead moments later," Maloney said. "It doesn't add up."
Described by Maloney as traumatized and grieving, Ashley's mother wasn't at a news conference held at the lawyer's office Wednesday.
Maloney said that, while the lawsuit seeks $10 million in actual damages and $20 million in punitive damages, what Ashley's mom wants most is to prove that her daughter was a victim.
"The numbers are really difficult to determine. What is the worth of human life?" Maloney said. "The main point is this thing shouldn't have happened."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- mrobbins@express-news.net
03/13/2003
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Or would you be beating the drums for our fabulous friends in the District of Criminals to "Protect us from this new form of demon-weed."
Of course not. That would have exposed your falsehood of your argument.
That would be meaningless with respect to your state laws restricting marijuana. It would be an interesting argument with respect to federal laws, providing that you could somehow meet the burden of demonstrating that the creation was unique.
Then maybe I should go back and order them, since I would like to see the "falsehood of my argument" and you sure as shootin' aren't pointing it out.
Maybe you could look at the post and see that it contains no argument. It contains a question. A very direct question, posted to you, that you have (in multiple posts) failed to answer. Here it is again:
Do you think the tactics and methods used by the agents were appropriate?
U.S. Patent Office. The best part about it would be the irony of pitting one extraconstitutional org against another in court.
You would have attempted to run down DEA officers?
U.S. Patent Office.
Non sequitur.
[Amendment X]
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This one is posted for your immediate edification. In looking over article 1, section 8, I find NO DELEGATED power to ban or prohibit one single solitary thing. And according to this, if it's not specifically there, it does not exist.
Beg those questions.
You asserted that the CSA finding were sheer fantasy. I called your bluff and raised one particular element of the findings, you instantly conceded that point and folded.
You pick any single element of the CSA findings that you think you can refute, and let's see if you can do it.
The 1st Congress prohibited moonshine.
Appellant John Wacker argues that the section of the Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 under which he was convicted, 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1) (the "Drug Act"), impermissibly regulates intrastate activities which do not substantially affect interstate commerce, in violation of the Tenth Amendment. Although he does not cite United States v. Lopez, 115 S. Ct. 1624 (1995), we assume that he asks us, in light of that recent decision, to reconsider our holding in United States v. King, 485 F.2d 353, 356 (10th Cir. 1973), that 21 U.S.C. 841(a)(1) is constitutional.United States v. Wacker, TENTH CIRCUITThis argument was recently rejected by the Fourth Circuit, see United States v. Leshuk, 65 F.3d 1105, 1111-12 (4th Cir. 1995), and we agree that it is without merit.
Unlike the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the statutory scheme at issue here neither “plows thoroughly new ground” nor “represents a sharp break with the long-standing pattern” of federal regulation. See Lopez, 115 S. Ct. at 1632 (quoting Lopez, 2 F.3d at 1366). Rather, § 860 addresses a clearly commercial activity that has long been within federal power to regulate. In contrast to the firearm possession at issue in Lopez, drug trafficking is an “economic enterprise” that substantially affects interstate commerce in numerous clear ways. Each individual instance of cocaine dealing, for example, represents the end point of a manufacturing, shipping, and distribution network that is interstate–and international–in nature. In fact, Congress included specific findings to that effect when it passed the Controlled Substances Act. Controlled Substances Act, Pub L. No. 91-513 (84 Stat. 1236), tit. II, § 101, 1970 U.S.C.C.A.N. 1444, 1444-45 (codified at 21 U.S.C. § 801); see also Controlled Substances Penalties Amendments Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-473, ch. V, sec. 503(a), § 405A, 1984 U.S.C.C.A.N. (98 Stat.) 2068, 2069
United States v. Tucker, SIXTH CIRCUIT
Moreover, contrary to Leshuk's alternative contention, the Drug Act is not unconstitutional as applied if his possession and cultivation were for personal use and did not substantially affect interstate commerce. Although a conviction under the Drug Act does not require the government to show that the specific conduct at issue substantially affected interstate commerce, see Scales, 464 F.2d at 373, Lopez expressly reaffirmed the principle that "where a general regulatory statute bears a substantial relation to commerce, the de minimis character of individual instances arising under that statute is of no consequence." Lopez, 115 S. Ct. at 1629 (quoting Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U.S. 183, 197 n.27 (1968)); see also United States v. Stillo, 57 F.3d 553, 558 n.2 (7th Cir. 1995); Scales, 464 F.2d at 374- 76. We thus reject Leshuk's Commerce Clause challenge to the constitutionality of the Drug Act.
United States v. Leshuk, FOURTH CIRCUIT
It is therefore not surprising that every court that has considered the question, both before and after the Supreme Court's decision in Lopez, has concluded that section 841(a)(1) represents a valid exercise of the commerce power. See, e.g., United States v. Edwards, ___ F.3d ___, ___, 1996 WL 621913, at *5 (D.C. Cir. Oct. 29, 1996); United States v. Kim, 94 F.3d 1247, 1249-50 (9th Cir. 1996); United States v. Bell, 90 F.3d 318, 321 (8th Cir. 1996); United States v. Lerebours, 87 F.3d 582, 584-85 (1st Cir. 1996); United States v. Wacker, 72 F.3d 1453, 1475 (10th Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 117 S. Ct. 136 (1996); United States v. Leshuk, 65 F.3d 1105, 1111-12 (4th Cir. 1995); United States v. Scales, 464 F.2d 371, 375 (6th Cir. 1972); Lopez, 459 F.2d at 953.Proyect v. United States, SECOND CIRCUIT
Many courts, including this court, have held that drug trafficking is precisely the kind of economic enterprise that substantially affects interstate commerce and that, therefore, comes within Congress's regulatory power under the Commerce Clause. See, e.g., United States v. Lerebours, 87 F.3d 582, 584-85 (1st Cir. 1996); United States v. Staples, 85 F.3d 461, 463, amended, ___ F.3d ___ (9th Cir. 1996) [1996 WL 359984]; United States v. Genao, 79 F.3d 1333, 1336-37 (2d Cir. 1996); United States v. Wacker, 72 F.3d 1453, 1475 (10th Cir. 1995), petition for cert. filed, No. 95-9284 (U.S. June 10, 1996); United States v. Brown, 72 F.3d 96, 97 (8th Cir. 1995) (per curiam), cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 2581 (1996); United States v. Leshuk, 65 F.3d 1105, 1112 (4th Cir. 1995). Indeed, Congress made particularized findings to this effect when it enacted the full panoply of criminal laws anent controlled substances. See 21 U.S.C. § 801.Given both this background and the truism "that courts, when passing upon the constitutionality of a statutory provision, must view it in the context of the whole statutory scheme," Vote Choice, Inc. v. DiStefano, 4 F.3d 26, 33 (1st Cir. 1993), it is not surprising to find that every court which has confronted the appellants' argument in the post-Lopez era has upheld section 860(a) against a Commerce Clause challenge. See, e.g., United States v. Tucker, ___ F.3d ___, ___ (6th Cir. 1996) [1996 WL 413411, at *1-4]; United States v. Rogers, ___ F.3d ___, ___ (7th Cir. 1996) [1996 WL 399850, at *11-12]; United States v. Clark, 67 F.3d 1154, 1165-66 (5th Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 1432 (1996); United States v. Garcia-Salazar, 891 F. Supp. 568, 569-72 (D. Kan. 1995); see also United States v. McDougherty, 920 F.2d 569, 572 (9th Cir. 1990) (scuttling pre-Lopez Commerce Clause challenge to earlier version of § 860(a)), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 911 (1991). Because we do not doubt that Congress has the authority under the Commerce Clause to regulate an activity as clearly commercial in character as drug trafficking, and because the particular statute that the appellants challenge is nothing more than a sentence-enhancer applicable to certain proscribed drug trafficking activities, we hold that 21 U.S.C. § 860(a) does not trespass into constitutionally forbidden terrain.
There are a lot of pro-drug, anti-cop libertarians spamming here.
All bark, no bite.
Backwards. You post falsehoods, then when facts are posted exposing them, complete with quotes, sites, sources and links, you yelp.
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