Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed. - George Burns

Busted In The Bayou

by West Virginia Rebel

What happens when you “Get tough” in the War on Pot? Some local DA gets to make a name for herself.

Shortly after Keva Landrum-Johnson took over as district attorney following Eddie Jordan’s resignation Oct. 30, hundreds of new felony cases flooded the public defenders office, overwhelming the 29 defense attorneys.

After New Orleans regained its title as the nation’s murder capital, the public demanded its city leaders crack down on violent crime. By filing hundreds of new felony cases each month, it appeared as if the new DA heeded their call.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, said Steve Singer, chief of trials for the Orleans Public Defenders Office.

The flood of new felony charges didn’t target murderers, rapists or armed robbers — they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy prison sentences.

The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and damaged low-income African-American communities, Singer said.

“We hardly have enough lawyers to handle the serious, violent cases, and now we’re jamming up the entire system with marijuana cases,” Singer said. “We never used to see this happen, then all of a sudden every second and third marijuana offense starts coming in as a felony.”

So who are these dangerous felons this new DA wants to put behind bars?

The New Orleans DA may be following a similar strategy but there is a big difference, said David Kennedy, a criminal justice professor at the City University of New York.

In New York, second and third marijuana possession cases are treated like traffic tickets where the offender is issued a civil citation and fined up to $250.

The problem with Landrum-Johnson’s strategy is that the harm done to the community by charging people with felonies for possessing a gram of marijuana far outweighs the harm done by the drug itself, Kennedy said.

People charged with felony marijuana possession will sit in Orleans Parish Prison for up to 60 days awaiting trial during which time they can lose their job and their family’s only source of income. And if they are convicted of a felony, it will severely damage their ability to find employment, a place to live, join the military, enter college or earn custody of their children in divorce proceedings, he said.

“This type of conviction can bring permanent damage to the entire life course of that individual,” Kennedy said. “And when there is a high density of these types of marijuana convictions in one area, it can do great harm to the community because you have people constantly going in and out of prison.

“Unless I’m completely missing something here, there is no crime-control rationale for this kind of approach.”

But there is a vote-getting rationale-as long as the DA only goes after the “Right people”:

Almost all of the people charged with felony marijuana possession each month in New Orleans are low-income African-Americans, Scharf said. And they are the people who are hurt the most by the DA’s new approach because they typically can’t afford to bail themselves out of jail. So they sit in Orleans Parish Prison for extended periods of time unable to support their families.

But it is well known that low-income African-Americans are not the only people in the Big Easy guilty of lighting up a joint every now and then, Scharf said.

“They’re targets of opportunity, lower-class individuals without resources. And for the most part, the public doesn’t seem to care. But you start arresting a bunch of Loyola and Tulane students and give them 12 years for smoking a joint and just see what happens. Parents will be out in the streets screaming with moral outrage and demanding justice.”

The War On Weed has proven to be a great time-waster for politicians. Unfortunately, they leave the rest of us holding the bag for its cost.

Comments

Posted by mikeguas on 07/24/08 at 10:11 PM from

After New Orleans regained its title as the nation’s murder capital, the public demanded its city leaders crack down on violent crime.

And people thought New Orleans could never recover. Sheesh.

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