Cranking up the caseload

By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer

Gale Cook works hard. She's the commonwealth attorney for Kentucky's 42nd judicial circuit, made up of Calloway and Marshall counties in Western Kentucky. She's also head of the state's Commonwealth Attorneys Association. More than a few cases cross her desk each week.

"For the last three years, we were averaging 435 felony indictments per year," she says. Split with one assistant, that's 217 (or 218, depending on your math) cases per attorney.

Cook says Dave Stengel, her counterpart in Jefferson County, has assistants working between 75 and 100 cases a year. And many of those attorneys are focused exclusively on prosecuting drug crimes or child sex abuse.

Cook's office, like Stengel's, must handle each and every case filed in her circuit. She says she's got to stay vigilant when checking up on court-ordered restitution payments, working with police to help assure their investigations remain above board and presenting cases to grand juries and advising those juries on the substance of the law.

But over her shoulder is the knowledge that the workload, this year, is getting worse.

"In the first six months of this year, we have returned 311 indictments," she says. "If we continue at the rate we're going, we'll hit 600 indictments this year."

Cook estimates, at a 40-hour workweek, that works out to about 6.9 hours per felony. But she doesn't work 40 hours a week. It's at least 60 and sometimes 90 hours a week to get the job done. She knows she does a good job for her judicial circuit, but ends her days very tired. Cook says "very possibly" a time will come when all she's got simply won't be enough to do the job.

The title of "Most Overworked Public Servant" is hotly contested.

Ernie Lewis, Kentucky's Public Advocate, says the public defenders he oversees grapple with towering caseloads admirably. Cook's office may end the year with 300 new cases per attorney. Kentucky's public defenders could average 500.

"Since I've been public advocate, since 1996, we have not had caseloads that were at a level that meet national standards," Lewis says.

Statewide criminal circuit court filings in fiscal 2004 were almost 50-percent higher than 1996 levels. Manpower and funding have not kept pace for a variety of reasons. Cook says, in light of tight budgets, the strategy for dealing with state government budget cutters has been simply, "Please don't cut us."

Cut and run

With two consecutive state budgets delayed over disputes between the governor and the General Assembly, including a budget that should currently be governing state spending, prosecutors continue to feel the squeeze.

The result for Gale Cook is working the occasional 90-hour week. For Ernie Lewis, it means accepting a different, but equally harsh reality, the possibility that defendants under the counsel of his office may plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit.

Plea deals are a healthy part of the legal process, Lewis says, but "the caseload problem encourages plea negotiations." Some cases, he says, end up in a plea deal when a trial is justified. But the hours involved for both the public defender and the prosecutor may make a jury trial virtually impossible. That leads Lewis to his "greatest fear" as head of the public defender system, "people are ending up entering a guilty plea when they are in fact not guilty of what they're charged with."

Towering caseloads for both sides, he says, creates "an immense incentive to resolve the case with a guilty plea."

Things aren't (that) tough all over

Linda Talley Smith, Commonwealth attorney for Boone and Gallatin counties in Northern Kentucky, says the spending freeze instituted across state government in December kept Commonwealth attorneys from adding new staff. Smith had to get a special exemption to even replace an assistant attorney who took a maternity leave.

Smith's judicial circuit leads the state in filings and closings, each numbering more than 2,000 in the last fiscal year.

In the first half of this year, Smith's office received 385 felony indictments. She says the numbers have been increasing "at about 27 and a half percent every year" since she took office in 1997.

But Smith isn't quite pulling her hair out. Her relatively urban circuit has been growing in population at about the same rate as felony indictments. New poplulation in her circuit may be helpful when she has to justify a bigger staff budget. It will also help when her circuit attempts to get another judge to handle the cases.

And to handle a similar number of felonies as Gale Cook in western Kentucky, she's got more than twice the staff. She's got three full time attorneys and three part timers in her office, not to mention five law school interns from Nortern Kentucky University that she "couldn't get by without."

The crimes are also different. As the commerce hub of Northern Kentucky, Boone county's crime increase has more to do with felony theft and bad checks than illicit drugs and murder.

Gale Cook and many other rural prosecutors can sum up the caseload problem in a word: meth.

The problem

Cook says methamphetamine cases, virtually non-existent less than 10 years ago, have "inundated" her office. Cases involving hard drugs in one way or another have made up most of the increase. As much as 80-percent of the increase is attributed to hard drugs. Most of those cases deal specifically with meth. And for those who don't have meth listed in the charges, the cases related to meth are growing, as well. Cook has seen youth burglary rings in which young people trade their stolen wares, often guns, for methamphetamine.

The meth trade is becoming more sophisticated as it grows.

"Through extensive investigations and interviews, what we've found is that we have organized crime here," Cook says. "We have enforcers. We have meth manufacturers that sell to middle-level distributors. It's organized crime."

Meth cases also constitute a rapidly growing share of criminal filings in circuit court.

A selection of circuit court cases specifically dealing with meth (see chart) in Calloway and Marshall counties has quadrupled from 1999 through 2004 fiscal years. Statewide, the same types of cases have more than quintupled. Criminal circuit filings overall have not grown at nearly the same rate.

Easing the burden

"The needs of prosecutors have long not been addressed by the General Assembly," says Attorney General Greg Stumbo. "As the legisiatlve body enacted more criminal sanctions, cases became more complex and more voluminous."

In Stumbo's 24 years in the General Assembly, he says he was "as guilty as any" legislator when it came to voting to criminalize more behavior.

"Sitting there enacting those laws," he says, "I didn't see the impact it had on the prosecutorial and the public defender systems."

But the time for Stumbo to do something about that is gone. Now, as Kentucky's highest ranking law enforcment officer, he has to enforce the law, not make it.

Stumbo's office is largely responsible for divvying up money to commonwealth attorneys statewide and says he's well aware of the drug problem in rural areas.

Stumbo says the caseload problem "is particularly exacerbated by all of these drug roundups going on right now."

Stumbo would like to establish regional extensions of the Attorney General's Office to offer investigators and prosecutors to help handle large drug cases on an as-needed basis.

He'd also like to expand "rocket dockets" to more portions of the state. Those dockets help identify cases most likely to enter plea agreements and get defendants into those plea agreements as soon as possible.

"There are 18 new jurisdictions that we have convinced to try this particlar program out," Stumbo says. "At the end of a year we'll look at what they're doing and what we can do."

The high cost of the legal system amid rapidly increasing drug crime isn't lost on Steve Pence, Kentucky's Justice Cabinet secretary and lieutenant governor. His drug summit earlier this year was aimed precisely at taking stock of Kentucky's existing drug-fighting resources.

Stumbo was among those making recommendations alongside Pence. Stumbo's particular hope of having prosecutors and investigators at the ready statewide is one of the recommendations put forth at the drug summit under the heading "coordinated prosecution."

Pence's focus since earlier in this year has been to push drug treatment and an expansion of drug court, though he's quick to point out that treatment is just one of three planks of his drug-fighting platform. The others: continued vigorous enforcement and expanded prevention.

Drug court appears to be the linchpin in Pence's plans to divert first offenders out of jail and into treatment, which he says is more effective and less costly than a stint in jail.

Funding drug court, Pence says, could be achieved in small part through assets seized from convicted drug criminals. The summit itself was funded with seized assets.

Hello? Over here!

Ernie Lewis sat on the drug summit's treatment panel. He's encouraged by much of the work done there, but says his caseload problem is still getting worse. Expanded drug court and treatment, he says, would likely help public defenders over the long run.

Lewis's problems are more immediate. A draft of the Public Advocate's annual defender caseloads report obtained by Snitch shows that in fiscal 2004, overall caseloads of public defenders were up 9 percent. Cases going to trial were up 9 percent, a higher growth rate than in years past. Funding per case, conversely, is in decline.

"Federal funds are coming in to create these task forces to arrest more people," Lewis says. "Some of the money is going to hire state prosecutors to prosecute in state court, and we're not going to get any of that funding."

Lewis has spent much of his time as Public Advocate establishing full-time offices for public defenders. Those offices now cover 112 of Kentucky's 120 counties. Eight years ago, when Lewis became Public Advocate, full-time defenders covered just 47 counties.

"Courts and prosecutions and defense need funding parity," Lewis says. "If prosecutors can send in prosecutors for large drug busts, then we need the same ability."

Lewis is quick to point out, however, that he doesn't believe Kentucky's prosecutors are by any means overfunded.

Public defenders' caseloads are 85 percent higher than what Lewis cites as a national standard. He has a familiar refrain that is lately reaching a fever pitch.

"We're at saturation point. We cannot play the role that is expected of us until we get significant new funding."

Old habits die hard

By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer

Nearly three years after 9/11, only frequent fliers seem to know the new rules of flying

Sarah B., by her own description, shows little modesty. SheÌs also a cynical traveler, given to telling friends, "All this security stuff is just to make stupid people feel secure." The Cincinnati native is, however, just modest enough to request that her last name not be included here.

Accustomed to setting off airport screening devices, Sarah can name half a dozen possible culprits when the magnetometer sounds off: her underwire bra, the wire in her jaw installed after surgery, and various other bits of metal on her clothing, including the tiny metal buttons on her jeans. Even her nipple rings set off screening equipment regularly.

But when a friendly airport screener in Cinci discovered SarahÌs chest seemed unusually reactive to the metal wands, Sarah told the woman the nipple rings were the likely culprits.

"She said, 'WeÌre going to have to check that out,' and I said, 'Are you serious?'"

She was.

Sarah was led behind a screen near the checkpoint, where she pulled her low-cut shirt down and showed the woman her piercings. Sarah says she was more annoyed at the inconvenience than at baring her bust to a stranger.

"After that, she patted me down," Sarah said. "She was behind me and she patted me between my breasts, among other places. It really wasnÌt that big of a deal. It probably would have been very upsetting if I had been anyone else. If I'd been in my regular mood, I would have been highly annoyed."

Seasoned business traveller Ranita Jones was annoyed at a security checkpoint when a metal hairpick, tweezers and an extra butane lighter held her up at the Northern Kentucky airport. She gave the extra lighter to her traveling companion and got it back when theyÌd both cleared the screeners. In 26 years of business travel, Jones has seen her property stay behind at security checkpoints only since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

And like many business travelers, Jones has learned dressing for success is getting more difficult.

"ThereÌs no such thing as dressing for business when you fly anymore," Jones says.

So she doesn't. Underwire bras have been replaced with sports bras. Her jewelry and hair barettes stay packed until she arrives at her destination. In short, she's replaced a business suit with a running suit and leaves little more than travel reading in her purse when she passes through security to avoid having to leave items behind.

Items left by travelers add up.

Transit Security Administration screeners at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Internationa Airport collect an average of 100 pounds of questionable property each week.

"It's every single kind of imaginable jackknife, scissors and, for some reason, an amazing number of kitchen knives and paring knives," says Paul Wisniewski, the airportÌs director of federal security. "Ladies often pack fruit on a trip."

Wisniewski says other items that typically fill up bins of the "voluntarily relenquished" include mini-corkscrews with attached mini-knives, multi-tools of several varieties, throwing stars, billy clubs and kubatons.

And guns.

"By now, this fiscal year, weÌve probably had over 500 guns show up at checkpoints around the country," Wisniewski says. Those guns are not voluntarily relenquished to screeners. Police confiscate them in the inevitable criminal investigation.

Buyer pays shipping

Buddy Peterson travels, usually with his wife and children, about twice a year. Since 9/11, heÌs flown in and out of Chicago twice with a keychain-sized Swiss Army knife and a pair of fold-up pliers. The knife was free. The pliers, a stocking stuffer.

"I dropped my keys in the little bucket and they said I couldnÌt fly with the knife and pliers," Peterson says.

His options: take them back to his car, put them in his checked baggage (which was already on the plane), leave them behind or ship them back to himself through the airportÌs mail-back program.

Peterson chose the final option, took his tools down to the customer service desk and got the needed envelope. At a charge of $6 per item, Peterson dropped the envelope in the nearby mailbox.

"What really chapped my ass, I looked at the envelope when we got home and the shipping charge was a dollar twenty-five," he says. "They make it really easy for you to give them your money."

If Peterson had just given up his items and waited a few weeks, he might have seen them avaiable for purchase on eBay from the Kentucky Division of Surplus Property. He might have even saved some money.

The division's eBay identity, "kysurplus," (feedback rating: 135) gets good reviews for its selling practices. User "gpa-termite" recently purchased a six-inch bone carving with intricately cut silhouettes of camels, and wrote, "oughta be illegal to ship so fast and package so well AAAA ++++ thanks."

All auctions conducted by the division include the requirement buyers pay KentuckyÌs 6 percent sales tax.

Airports in Northern Kentucky, Lexington and Louisville turn over hundreds of pounds of confiscated items as surplus every six weeks.

Louisville airport officials confiscate a fairly large number of souvenir bats from the Louisville Slugger plant.

But the division also collects property from BostonÌs Logan Airport and airports in Miami, Orlando, Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla.

Jill Midkiff, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Finance Cabinet, says the agency recently received a shipment of 4,800 pounds from Logan and picked up 10,000 pounds of prohibited items on the last trip to Florida.

Those items are sorted into dozens of bins when they arrive in Frankfort. Surplus property sells items to other state agencies so they aren't caught paying retail.

Then the non-profit groups pick over the surplus wares.

"Multi-tools are very popular among Boy Scouts," Midkiff said.

And then, finally, the public gets a crack at some excessively sharp (or blunt) items for sale on the web, sometimes 20 identical Swiss Army knives or Leatherman multi-tools will be sold in the same lot for $40.

And adding up the cash seems to be more difficult than you might think.

Midkiff would not provide hard estimates of revenues from the sale of property turned over by fliers, but says, "Of items sold by the pound ... the average is about $3."

She adds, "We might sell one knife for $60, and we might sell a bucket of scissors for $2."

Soft Cell

By Caleb O. Brown
Snitch Staff Writer

You pay to get in, not to get out,” says Paul McCoy, innkeeper at the Jailer’s Inn in Bardstown, eagerly rattling through a list of, ahem, arresting slogans. “We pamper our prisoners … It’s a captivating experience.”

As one of his guests inches toward the front door, weighed down by her luggage, McCoy says, “Breakin’ out, huh?” As if it’s the first time the quip has come to mind.

The woman chuckles politely and tells McCoy she left the key to her room upstairs. McCoy nods, then obliges the departing visitor with some directions out of town.

McCoy likes to refer to his guests as inmates because the Jailer’s Inn was, until 1987, the Nelson County Jail, the oldest operating slammer in Kentucky.

Now it’s a popular bed and breakfast in the center of Bardstown’s historic square.

McCoy, as much as being the innkeeper, has also been thrust into the position of local historian. Stories from centuries past amble back to him through elderly locals, brittle books and even the occasional former inmate.

And McCoy, a clean-cut blond with a broad grin, enjoys retelling them, his eyes widening at key moments in numerous tales — true, legendary and otherwise — of jailbreaks, famous inmates and recent ghost hunters who sometimes appear in search of the supernatural.

The jail

There was a wooden jail on the same site before the current stone structure.

Short and sweet, that jail’s story goes something like this: Around 1790, a husband and wife in Nelson County had a spat. The wife had the police put her husband in jail. A short time later, she decided she’d been without her beloved long enough. After being refused the company of her husband by the sheriff, the young lady hit upon a solution: Burn the jail and get her husband back — preferably uncooked. And so she did. But crime does not pay. She was caught and convicted.

Rather than accept a year in jail, the woman submitted to 40 lashes on her bare back in the court square. Or maybe it was just five, McCoy says, noting a second version of the story. Mere details.

The current structure is two parts. The front was built in 1820 with 30-inch-thick limestone walls, inch-thick iron bars on every window and topped with a high ceiling of black, 18-inch oak beams. When Kentucky law demanded that the jailer live on site, the front was converted to housing and another building was attached to the back for prisoners. A separate cell with a solid iron door was maintained for females, complete with its own private shower. It’s the only room at Jailer’s Inn that still looks like a jail cell, with iron bunks on one wall.

McCoy added some softer mattresses and a waterbed.

All of Nelson County’s jailers have been men, with one exception: Maxie McCay, jailer from 1950-62. After the death of her husband, Mrs. McKay was elected jailer to continue his job, but also to keep a roof over her children’s heads.

McKay’s matronly face looked more suited to adorn cans of “homestyle” soup or marmalade and simply not the face you’d fear in jail. After all, this is a woman who turned the “upstairs dungeon” into a room specifically for curing hams.

But McKay knew more about running a jail than many would have initially given her credit for. She rewarded good prisoners with “trusty” status, allowing them home-cooked meals and frequent trips into the courtyard behind the jail. Poorly behaved prisoners had their diets switched from ham and gravy to bread and water. Dietary discipline usually worked like a charm.

McCoy says many of McKay’s children and grandchildren, who grew up in and around the jail, recently held a family reunion at Jailer’s Inn.

In 1970, McCoy says, an 18-year-old woman — arrested for passing bad checks — tried to escape from the relatively posh cell. She stripped down to nothing, soaped herself up and tried to slide her slender frame through the iron door’s portal through which the jailer would pass meals. The young woman got halfway through before she got stuck. With the help of jailer Norris Conder, a doctor and the “Bardstown Night Police Chief,” the woman was soaped up further and popped through the portal. She paid court costs, fines and restitution and was released.

McCoy details another daring escape in the jail’s final year as such, this one with more soap sophistication.

Wayne Greenwell and Doug Hamilton, both of Bardstown, found themselves on the wrong side of the jail’s iron bars. Early one Sunday morning in 1986, they decided they wouldn’t be staying. Fashioning a phony gun barrel from two bars of soap and some ink, the men covered the fake barrel with a small rag and forced the deputy jailer to turn over the keys.

Their freedom, however, was short-lived, as the law caught up with them.

Behind the jail, a walled courtyard surrounds flowers and an outdoor kitchen.

That new-fangled electricity wasn’t to be trusted indoors, so cooking was mostly done outside. Against the wall of the jail, where flowerbeds now sit, tall wooden gallows stood waiting for the condemned.

Phil Evans learned the meaning of swift justice in Nelson County. Charged with rape in October of 1893, he was kept in Jefferson County for his own safety before the trial. Evans pleaded not guilty on Nov. 9. He was convicted two days later. With townspeople sitting along the high stone courtyard walls, Evans was hanged on Jan. 5, 1894.

McCoy grins as he explains that he likes to serve breakfast in the courtyard on clear days.

Checking the register

Famous inmates included John Dillinger, who stayed one night as he was en route to another, less forgiving facility in Indiana. Legend has it that Dillinger’s fans simply couldn’t bear the thought of their beloved staying in such cold confines and would have sprung him from anywhere, had they only known his name. Dillinger’s keepers, wise to the fact, made sure this particular prisoner checked in under an alias.

Frank and Jesse James stayed at the jail, too, though never as inmates. It was among the places the James brothers found safe haven as they were being hunted for attacks on Union sympathizers. The two outlaws had the distinction of being relatives of the sheriff at the time, A.D. Pence. Pence married into the Samuels clan (of Maker’s Mark bourbon fame) of Bardstown, who were related to the James brothers.

John Fitch, the celebrated inventor of the steamboat (long before Robert Fulton, mind you), is rumored to have died in the Nelson County Jail after he’d developed a habit of drinking a fifth of bourbon each day. The sheriff reportedly cared for Fitch through his final days.

The bed

The rooms have all undergone a great deal of renovation since McCoy and his wife purchased the property shortly after it became available. The rooms barely hint at their former use.

“The 1819 Room” is nicknamed the “upstairs dungeon,” since it was little more than an empty room with several iron o-rings in the floor to keep prisoners from moving around too much. The room now features thick carpeting and a canopy bed. Instead of country hams, small cherubs hang from the walls, and a double-jacuzzi is tucked away in the bathroom.

Several of the rooms feature bits of furniture from different periods, but they blend with a quiet relaxation that comes with rocking chairs, thick quilts and lacy coverings for seemingly everything.

Unreal guests

Paul McCoy has seen a new kind of guest visit since the fall of 2002. The Travel Channel featured the Jailer’s Inn among the 10 spookiest places in America.

Since then, seasoned bed and breakfast guests and ghost hunters have sought out the inn as a place to stay and have a paranormal experience.

A few guests have checked in, only to vanish in the middle of the night, leaving a key on the front desk and issuing a rushed, but apologetic, phone call in the morning as they ride away, clearly spooked by something most guests never experience.

McCoy, reluctant to play up the reports of ghosts and other such visitors to his inn, does admit to what he calls “a unique presence.”

“I believe there’s something here, but I don’t know what causes it,” he says.

Though he says he’s never seen anything unusual himself, he’s sure his pets have.

And the inn’s reputation has also cost McCoy an employee.

“A girl who worked for me, cleaning one of the rooms one day, saw a man in the upstairs dungeon room in the mirror. She turned around and saw nothing. She turned back around and saw him again in the mirror. She got so spooked she ran downstairs and out the front door.”

McCoy says the young woman quit about a week later.

Poor reviews

Aside from the impressive guest register, a few former inmates have left their own mark on their one-time home. “The Nelson County Jail” is among several poems still emblazoned on the jail’s inner walls (and pardon the misspellings).


When I was young I used to mess around
In a little hick place called Bardstown
When one night I went to get drunk
And I ended up on the bottom bunk
When I woke I felt like hell
I was in the Nelson County Jail
The Nelson County Jail is no place to be
If you got a wife and a baby
So if you fell you hafe to raise hell
Stay away from the Nelson County Jail.

“Soon to be Free”

Once I was in the Nelson Co. Jail
They said I was there for raising hell
I tried to tell them that
I was only drunk
But they laughed
and showed me a bunk
They tried to break my soul into
But that’s one thing they’ll never do
They took me away
from the one I loved
And placed me in a cell above
But one day soon I’ll be free
And then it’ll be my ladie and me
When it’s all over and done
I will no longer hafe to run
I’ll be free to live my life
Me, my child and my lovely wife

“Outlaws”

Life as a outlaw is not always fun
You are always out there on the run
You stay ahead of the law for a while
And say screw the world, with style
When the party’s over,
you can always ride
But sooner or latter there
will be no place to hide
You may never know where
they hell you are
You just roam from bar to bar
You may son be known as one of the best
Like Frank and Jesse and all the rest
They were the outlaws who rode thru hell
But even they ended up in jail
So before you head out for life of crime
Think of all the outlaws still doing time

Body lay in destroyed home for 4-1/2 months

By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer (Snitch Newsweekly)

Dixie Suburban Fire Chief Tim Robbins was nervous, judging from the way he continuously clicked the pen in his hand.

The “informal” meeting last Wednesday was called by Metro Councilwoman Mary Woolridge to, she said, “reassure the folks that are protected by Dixie Suburban Fire District that they have good services.”

It’s been almost five months since the fire on Oregon Avenue, which likely claimed the life of Craig Moore. It’s been just two weeks since a state medical examiner, called in to search the home, “saw a foot” sticking out of the debris in Moore’s basement. Jefferson County Deputy Coroner Jim Wesley said the body has yet to be identified.

Moore’s neighbors don’t need DNA testing to tell them that it’s Craig Moore.

They claim fire and police officials ignored requests that they conduct another search of Moore’s home to find his body.

Robbins spent much of the meeting explaining the circumstances that prevented Dixie Suburban fire officials from getting inside the building.

“It took quite some time to get into all of the areas of the fire,” Robbins said. “When we first arrived, the front door — a solid wood door — was gone. The floor, when we attempted to gain entry, apparently had burned away. We learned later that it had.”

An arson investigator didn’t want to go into the basement. “He said it didn’t look safe,” said Robbins. Ceiling and floor collapse, water in the basement and complications attempting to remove the water also impeded search efforts.

“When I talked with the arson investigators and the insurance investigators,” Robbins said, “they were telling me the same thing, ‘We don’t think he’s in there.’”

Craig Moore’s neighbors said the house was boarded up within a week of the fire. Ron Holder — Moore’s neighbor for 28 years — said other neighbors had circulated a petition within days of the fire, calling on authorities to again search for Moore, but authorities did nothing.

“I knew his routine,” Holder said. “Even the mailman was saying, ‘He’s there.’”
Holder asked Robbins why he didn’t know of all the resources available to him and didn’t learn of one key option until just a few weeks ago.

“When Craig Moore’s brother filed the missing person’s report, he learned from the police that they could have used cadaver dogs from the state medical examiner’s office,” said Holder.

Robbins admitted that Moore’s brother was the one who made him aware that his agency could use the cadaver dogs to conduct a thorough search for the body.

“I now know that if there’s a question like that, I can contact those people,” Robbins said. “I had no guidelines that told me that was the case.”

Deputy Coroner Wesley said his office will likely use DNA testing to learn the identity of the body.

In wake of attacks, author questions the connections

By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer

Within two days of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, chartered airplanes began traveling to various parts of the United States, picking up Saudi nationals, preparing to leave the country.

One of those planes, an elaborately decorated 727, left Lexington, Ky., on Sept. 13, and one of the passengers who boarded the jetliner was Prince Ahmed bin Salman, best known to Americans as the Saudi horseman who owned War Emblem, the winner of the 2002 Kentucky Derby.

Point Given, another property of the prince, won the Preakness and Belmont Stakes in 2001.

Craig Unger, author of the book House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties, asserts that the flights would have required the approval of the White House, since private air traffic was grounded at the time.

He further asserts there is reason to believe that bin Salman may have essentially been a “material witness” in the investigation into the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Unger says he obtained the flight manifest for the 727 that took off from Lexington, as well as other flights that crossed the country, picking up as many as 142 people, mostly Saudis, before leaving the United States.

Unger served as deputy editor of The New York Observer and was the editor of Boston Magazine.

Snitch spoke with Unger on April 16, just after the commission investigating the terrorist attacks cleared those associated with allowing those flights (which included members of the extended bin Ladin family) out of the United States.

What was Prince Ahmed doing before he was picked up?

He was in Lexington for the yearling sales, and Sept. 12 he bought $1.2 million worth of horses.

What about Sept. 15th? Those flights took off with the explicit approval of the president, did they not?

Let me back up, because I’m trying to be very careful here. This was a two-week process, really, that started on Sept. 13, as far as I can determine.

The first flight that I was able to nail down left from Tampa to Lexington on the afternoon of Sept. 13.

It was one of eight airplanes over the next two weeks stopping in 12 cities taking over 140 passengers — most of whom were Saudis, but not all of them. Many of them were high-ranking members of the Saudi royal family, and about two dozen were members of the bin Ladin family.

The 9/11 Commission said that the FAA had said the air restrictions had been lifted?

I’ve got the quote here from the commission’s Statement 10, which said the Saudi flights were screened by law enforcement officials, primarily the FBI, to ensure that people on the flights did not pose a threat to national security and that nobody of interest to the FBI with regard to the 9/11 investigation was allowed to leave the country. The commission also says no commercial planes were permitted to fly into, out of, or within the United States until Sept. 13, 2001. The paragraph closes, “We have found no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi nationals left the United States before the reopening of national airspace.” Does that jibe with evidence you have?

Not entirely, no. Commercial flights had slowly begun to resume that day, but at 10:57 a.m., the FAA issued a reminder that private aviation was still prohibited.

Three private planes violated the ban that day, and in each case a pair of jet fighters forced the planes down. As far as private planes were concerned, America was still grounded.

It was at this time, nevertheless, the first flight was allowed to leave. There’s no question it was discussed at the White House.

We know that for certain it was discussed at the White House and Richard Clarke told it to the 9/11 commission.

My point here is not that something illegal was done, it’s that something very, very unusual was done that required a discussion and got a decision at the White House.

Here you have a decision that really speaks to the issue of whether we’re going to do a favor to the Saudis, these wealthy Saudis, or we’re going to aggressively try to figure out on 9/11 and start an investigation in the midst of a huge, huge national security crisis. What appears to have happened was the Saudis get the nod.

When did the White House acknowledge that these flights took place?

The White House has never acknowledged to me. In fact, they denied the flights took place to me, and I had at least seven or eight conversations with the White House.

Didn’t Vice President Dick Cheney appear on “Meet the Press” where he discussed it?

(Secretary of State) Colin Powell acknowledged it on “Meet the Press” and said he believed they’d arranged something, but he didn’t know the details. Dick Cheney said he didn’t know anything about it.

The FAA denied the first flight took place and they said there were no flight logs. The FBI denied it as well.

But we have Richard Clarke, who made the approval?

He was part of that discussion. I don’t know that it’s fair to say he made the approval.

He said, “I think it’s okay if they’ve been vetted by the FBI.” And my point is, I then talked to two FBI people who were parties to it and they said, “Well, we identified them, but we really didn’t interview them.”

I talked to John L. Martin, who was a very high-ranking Justice Department official who was head of counter-terrorism investigations for 18 years.

I talked to Oliver Buck Ravell, I believe the No. 2 person at the FBI. He said one of the first things you do if you’re doing a murder investigation — one person or 3,000 people — is you interview the relatives and the business associates. That did not happen here.

Why do you think Ahmed bin Salman was potentially such a key figure in the Sept. 11 investigation?

I think the definitive account of this was written by Gerald Posner. I went over his report and talked to him. He wrote a book called Why America Slept. Very, very interesting stuff about Prince Ahmed.

In March of 2002, Abu Zubaida, a high level al Qaeda operative was captured in Pakistan. During the interrogation, he explained that there were real links between the Saudi royal family and al Qaeda. He named Prince Ahmed. He knew his phone number and his cellphone. This was considered extraordinarily startling information to the CIA.

They were agog. He was not a likely suspect.

They later took this information to Saudi intelligence and said, “What are we to make of this?”

The Saudis denied it, by the way. When Prince Ahmed returned home to Saudi Arabia, he was found dead of a heart attack at age 43.

Zubaida had named a total of three Saudis. They all — in similar positions as Prince Ahmed — they all ended up dead. What was striking to me was that Zubaida said he was the intermediary between the Saudi royal family and al Qaeda.

But here he is, Prince Ahmed, being ferried out of the country with apparent White House approval, FBI approval, two days after 9/11.

At the very least, one would think this is the place where an investigation begins.

Is this a case of, upon looking back on it, the White House, Richard Clarke and others simply made a mistake?

I’m not trying to be critical of Richard Clarke. I find it striking that President Bush did not respond to the Aug. 6 memo.

I do believe reasonable people can disagree about the extent to which terrorism should have been front and center on his agenda prior to 9/11.

After 9/11, believe me, it’s got to be the first priority.

Remember, the World Trade Center is still in flames. We think the death toll was still 10,000 at this stage. America was shocked beyond belief. Why is it that our first priority was to allow these Saudis out of the country without questioning?

Think about it. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. We know the funding for al Qaeda was Saudi. The infrastructure of al Qaeda, the Saudis play a huge role.

This is where the investigation should have begun.

Is KBI DOA?

By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer

Attorney General-elect Greg Stumbo had an idea in the fall of 2002 that he’s been pushing ever since: a new division of the Kentucky State Police to focus more directly on drug and terrorism investigations, funded through a new 15-cent-per-pack cigarette tax.

The new agency’s name: the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation.

But questions about KBI and how it would operate are getting lost in the whirlwind of political change in Frankfort. Out with the old regimes and in with the new.

As Republican Gov.-elect Ernie Fletcher recovers from shoulder surgery, his administration is rapidly being assembled.

For Stumbo, his administration is settling in, too, except, spokesmen say, the outgoing House Majority Floor Leader is now saddled with additional duties to help the Democratic Party regroup after it lost the governor’s office, the biggest bully pulpit in the state.

Not familiar

In the year since he floated the idea of the KBI, Stumbo introduced a bill in the Kentucky House to create and fund the agency. It never got a hearing in committee.

Fellow Democrats on the House Revenue and Appropriations Committee don’t know much more about Stumbo’s plan.

“I’m not familiar with it,” said Democrat Bob Cherry, co-chair of the committee. “I do know that it’s been part of his campaign. He is interested in it. I have not seen a detailed plan, including the costs or where the money for it would come from. That would have a lot to do with my position.”

House Speaker Jody Richards declined to comment on the proposal, saying he didn’t know enough about it.

State police have expressed similar questions about the proposal and exactly what Stumbo’s agency would do.

“I don’t think anybody’s had any contact with him to clarify what he wants,” KSP spokesman Phil Crumpton said.

Crumpton said Stumbo had discussed some proposals with state police Commissioner Pat Simpson, but that it was “way back when” and that no contact had been made since Stumbo’s election this month.

Crumpton said the commissioner was attempting to speak with Stumbo last week to clarify the role of the proposed agency.

Pamela Trautner, spokeswoman for the state Justice Cabinet, which oversees state police, said that no proposals have come to the cabinet and what officials know of the KBI is “pretty much what we’ve read in the newspapers.”

“It’s my understanding that we’ve not had any conversations with Attorney General-elect Stumbo,” she said.

Stumbo was on vacation this week and unavailable for comment.

Money problems

Kentucky’s budget situation has worsened since Stumbo first proposed the KBI.
Rep. Cherry said the budget fight in 2004 is “not going to be any easier this time around.”

He added, “If anything, it may be worse. We used many one-time pots of money to balance this budget. We raided the coffers, so to speak.”

Last month, Stumbo told Snitch that he wanted to fund the agency with a 15-cent-per-pack cigarette tax.

An increase in the cigarette tax has been proposed by many groups, most of which want to use the proceeds for a particular project, be it Medicaid or salary increases for public school teachers.

A state bureau of investigation would have to compete with numerous other interests for state dollars.

State Rep. Bob Damron of Nicholasville, also a vice-chair of the House Revenue and Appropriations Committee, said funding will be scarce for any new projects in the next session.

“We’ve got to look at taking care of what we’ve got before we expand into anything else,” he said.

Cherry agrees.

“We’re under pressure to increase education, particularly post-secondary,” he said. “I guess what I’m saying is that the budget problems we faced last year are going to be great, if not greater, this coming winter.”

Failing state funding, Stumbo told Snitch, “I’ve been in contact with (Republican) Congressman Hal Rogers, who happens to be a friend of mine; he just appropriated $13 million for his united effort in his congressional district, which is law enforcement, rehabilitation services, drug courts. He tells me that he’ll try to assist at the federal level to help us get funding for statewide initiatives.”

Concerns

“I think we’re pretty well known in this area for combating drugs, particularly meth,” Daviess County Sheriff Keith Cain said.

“More than anything at all, I need additional bodies, manpower. What I don’t need is another law enforcement entity that tells me that they’re on call, but because of other pressing issues in the Commonwealth, are not available to me.”

Cain had a bit of advice for the attorney general-elect.

“However they envision this entity, their success is going to be dependent on how well they work with local entities,” he said.

Absent a detailed proposal, Democratic state Rep. Jim Wayne of Louisville wondered if the agency was even necessary, given the resources currently available, especially those directly at the disposal of the attorney general.

“The attorney general has an army of investigators at his disposal. Why would you set up a new bureaucracy? The state police have an army of investigators. Local authorities have investigators. Even the state ethics commission has investigators. They’re being used on Gov. Patton right now.”

In addition, Wayne said that because the state police are under the executive branch, the attorney general would have no authority over the KBI.

Damron expressed concerns that current state police resources might be placed at risk if a new division were created.

“Pay raises for existing state police have to take a higher priority than any new spending,” he said. “I’m not going to be willing to sacrifice the Kentucky State Police for some new program.”

Wayne believes the attorney general’s office has powers and resources already in place to conduct the kinds of investigations Stumbo wants the KBI to handle, noting that the attorney general already has subpoena power at his discretion.

“If he wants to reorganize his office, that’s something he can do,” he said. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. We just have to roll it.”

The Republican: Jack Wood

Snitch interviewed all three candidates for the position of Kentucky Attorney General, the top law enforcement position in the Commonwealth.

The interview was conducted last Sunday by staff writer Caleb O. Brown.

What courtroom experience do you have?

No one has more courtroom experience than me and Gatewood. I’ve got 10 years of prosecuting experience. When I was an assistant county attorney, we had 30 cases a day. Gatewood probably only works one or two cases a day when he’s in court. I’m the one with experience in this race.

Qualifications over Stumbo and Galbraith?

We’ve all been attorneys for about the same amount of time. Their time has been spent as defense attorneys. My job has been a prosecutor and as a district judge. As a judge I had to weigh the evidence. If a person was found guilty, I had to pass sentence in order to ensure compliance.

As a prosecutor, we had to investigate the case, apply the applicable law to it and present this evidence to a judge or a jury. We had to convince them that a person was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. We also had to be a part of the sentencing process and we made sure that the sentence was complied with.
With my 14 years of experience as a judge or a prosecutor — which has been paid for by the taxpayers of Kentucky — that means after I’m sworn into office, I can be prosecuting in the courtrooms of Kentucky. My two opponents will either be in school learning how to be a prosecutor, or worse, they’ll be getting on-the-job training.

You have to have an outlook because you’re the chief law enforcement officer of the state, you’re the head of the law department for the state. You’re also head of the crime victims association for the state.

One of my opponents has exhibited his defense attorney mentality. Greg Stumbo wrote a letter on behalf of one of his former employees — Kent Downey — who was convicted on prostitution and gambling charges, of running those procedures out of his office. As the chief law enforcement officer of this state, you won’t see me writing a letter on behalf of someone who exploits women in that manner, asking a judge to set a lenient sentence. We need to be setting a standard. There will be plenty of people asking for leniency; that’s the defense attorney’s job. It’s the prosecution’s job to see that the proper sentence is imposed to get compliance and to show that this not a crime that is acceptable in the state.

Your opponents have made OxyContin and methamphetamine abuse problems priorities should they win.

Both of my opponents have a drug plan. I have a drug plan. Gatewood Galbraith proposes that we file a lawsuit similar to the tobacco lawsuit filed by the states. I think that’s a good step, but it’s not the only thing, it’s part of the process. I think he’s right because I think the pharmaceutical companies set out to do exactly what they did, and I don’t think their motives were pure.

But that will take two to seven years. And we have to depend on a jackpot jury to award that much to us. We can proceed with that while we go ahead with my plan.

Mr. Stumbo has a drug plan called the KBI. The problem with that is he wants a new bureaucracy that he will be the head of. He wants law enforcement officers under his direct control.

The problem is that we have state police who are retiring. They are our most seasoned officers. The money is there, but they’re not being replaced by even the newest recruits. We need more manpower on the streets so that we can attack this problem.

The other problem is funding. He wants to fund this with a new tax on cigarettes. He wants to add $1.50 to a carton of cigarettes. He says he wants to make pushers pay, but this is a tax on law-abiding people who are engaged in a legal activity. He wants to punish farmers who grow it, merchants who sell it and users who use it.

If you want to make pushers pay, you need to go after the assets of pushers, the distributors and the manufacturers. Let’s attack their property, both civil and real, and their bank accounts.

My plan is three parts. We’ve got to eradicate, educate and rehabilitate.
I propose we fund our law enforcement all the way down to the city and county levels. We go after the suppliers, distributors and manufacturers. We close them down.

When you have somebody who is more afraid of not getting their drug than getting put in jail or fined, then we’ve got a problem. We have to rehabilitate. We can go to the private sector; we can use faith-based options. We can increase our drug court participation.

The third thing is educate. We can’t afford to lose another generation of Kentuckians to drugs. I don’t care how many factories you have sitting in that community, if that labor force has lost its will to get up and go to work and perform their services for a Friday night paycheck, it’s not going to work. Those factories will have to close and go elsewhere.

In Kentucky, the average drug user spends about $60,000 a year to support their drug habit. Most people don’t make that. Once they’ve quit their job and sold their property, they’ve got to get money. What are they going to do? They turn to crime.

Now, capital cases go up, domestic violence goes up, people stop paying their child support. We have farmers in Western Kentucky who go out to get their anhydrous ammonia and find that it’s stolen because it’s an ingredient in methamphetamine.

I propose that we expand our DARE programs, and we’ve got to talk to young people about drug addiction.

Your pay was suspended twice as a district judge. Can you speak to that?

In Kentucky, any candidate for judicial office has to run under what is called the Judicial Canons of Ethics. There are many lawyers and judges who think those canons of ethics are too strong, too restrictive.

A similar canons of ethics, I believe, is in Minnesota. A judge brought an action saying that it was a restriction of his right of free speech. A judge upheld it. It’s now before the Supreme Court for review.

Mr. Stumbo, myself and Gatewood, if we were running under those canons of ethics, we would all have been suspended because we have all made comments that would not be permitted. All you can really say as a judicial candidate is that you’ll be fair and impartial.

In my first campaign for judge, I ran against an incumbent. My campaign committee did a poll in the four-county area. The results were that three of the four counties would vote for me. My committee ran an ad to that effect. After I defeated the incumbent judge and carried those three counties, a complaint was filed by someone.

The judicial commission decided that we hadn’t used a professional polling group. We admitted to that, that we had done it all in-house. They said that brought some sort of disrespect upon the judiciary. They suggested I take responsibility for this, since I was the candidate and I was responsible for everything my committee did. I agreed to that. It was a 10-day suspension of pay. I learned from it.

The other instance occurred when you set what was called an unreasonably high bond. Is that right?

No. What happened there was that my campaign committee ran an advertisement saying that I had been nominated for judge of the year. My brother, who was a practicing attorney in the community, made the nomination. They said that shouldn’t have happened. They said that my committee should not have made that nomination, even though my brother was qualified to make the nomination. Once again, they suggested a suspension of pay. The important thing to mention is that this was all pay. None of this was about judicial abilities.

You were suspended as an assistant county attorney.

That’s an interesting thing. Stewart Media Group, which is running Greg Stumbo’s media operations, filed an open records request with the Jefferson County Attorney’s office. Back came this letter — I know because I have a copy of it — which wasn’t signed at the bottom. It was just initialed at the top. I don’t remember having pay suspended. I don’t remember receiving this. My superiors at the time don’t remember this. This letter that they have wasn’t signed off on by myself, saying that I’ve seen it. It wasn’t signed off on by the county attorney at the time, Mike Conliffe.

The other interesting thing about that. Do you remember when the commonwealth attorney got his speeding ticket dismissed?

There were three county attorneys in that case. No one remembered doing it, but The Courier-Journal filed an open records request because they said they remembered one of those county attorneys having been suspended for the same activity. The report that came back to The Courier-Journal was, “We don’t keep records as far back as 1996.” But this letter was dated 1991. All of a sudden they don’t keep records back for Democratic prosecutors, but now they keep them back for Republicans?

One of the things I’d like to point out here. Ray Stewart and his media group, they’ve got to be some of the most unethical people in the media business. You remember back in the May primary where an advertisement was run in Eastern Kentucky and it was nicknamed the “naked PVA ad”?

Ray Stewart was the one who promoted that, produced it and put it on the air. Now Greg Stumbo has hired this individual to run his media. I think the people you employ and the people you put in your service speaks to what kind of public official you will be.

The Independent: Gatewood Galbraith

Snitch interviewed all three candidates for the position of Kentucky Attorney General, the top law enforcement position in the Commonwealth.

The interview was conducted last Thursday by staff writer Caleb O. Brown.

What makes you more qualified than Greg Stumbo and Jack Wood?

I’ve been a practicing defense attorney in the courtrooms every day for the past 26 years. I’m highly regarded for my courtroom success. I’m capable of putting cases together from the prosecutorial end, which is one of the job functions of the attorney general. Mostly, I’m more qualified than these two guys because I have no interest to which I am beholden. Being an independent cannot be overemphasized in this race.

We all should be able to handle ourselves in the courtroom. We all have to be licensed attorneys, so we have to meet the minimum standard there. Being independent of any special interests, any party politics, any partisanship, that’s what separates me from these other two guys. Right now is such a critical time in Kentucky’s history, where partisan politics has gridlocked our system and … stopped the delivery of vital services for which it’s set to function. Independence is what gives me quality over these other two guys.

You have no elective experience. You’ve always been an independent attorney. In terms of building a prosecutorial staff, what impact will that have?

I’ve already consulted with people on the transition that needs to occur once we win. Lots of experienced political, intelligent people have come forth and counseled with me on what it takes to put together a shadow team, placing your people with the key people in the past administration so that the baton can be handed off in an efficient manner. The attorney general’s office has 240 or 250 employees, 16 basic areas of service. I’m going into it with the idea that everybody up there is working to maximum efficiency and doing a good job. I know that they’re going to have an 8 percent to 10 percent budget reduction next year …. The delivery of services as they currently exist should be a top priority of whoever goes in.

The first plank of your platform deals with corruption, inside and outside of state government. You believe that as an independent, you are most suited to deal with abuses of both parties. What specific offices in state government will receive your office’s highest level of scrutiny?

(Chuckles). Right now Transportation looks like a pretty good candidate. I don’t think the investigation is going to be done there. I’m interested in any quid pro quo deals between folks with state contracts and the contributions they make to the politicians that they put in power. I think personal service contracts and the hiring of outside help is one of the main vehicles of corruption.

In Paul Patton’s first year, those contracts were $220 million or so. In his last year, it was over $850 million. That growth of $600 million a year in hiring outside help is the area where most of the payoffs and cronyism goes. No telling how many payoffs have been made that way.

There is a legislative oversight committee, but they don’t pull many contracts. I think the reason is that the Republicans don’t really want to eliminate corruption in Frankfort. I think that party wants to replace the Democrats at the trough to see how deep they can dig their snouts into it.

Corruption is what keeps this state bankrupt financially and morally. We’ve gone from a budget surplus down to a budget deficit. So much of that money goes to special projects. It’s not being used to pay the state’s bills. It’s the political payoffs that are the institutionalized corruption.

I’ll bring up a point here. Mr. Stumbo, during the KET debate, looked into the camera and said, I’ve been up there 24 years and I’ve never seen any corruption. I said, ‘Mr. Stumbo, what about BOPTROT, the Kent Downey affair, the Love Gov. and the Transportation Department? Don’t you think those things qualify as corruption?’ Then I got to thinking about it. You know, in his mind, maybe that doesn’t qualify as corruption. It’s more of a lifestyle to him. Maybe what’s corruption to some people may seem like business as usual to other people. Business as usual is what has brought this state to a very critical juncture.

The state budget will likely limit your abilities to prosecute crime. How will you deal with that?

We’re all going to have to face budget cuts. I’m going to ask the employees of the office to dig a little deeper and find a little more desire to do the best job that they can. We need to get a little more production out of the people we have.

Setting the persona of being honest and a hard worker myself I think is going to set well. I plan on being up there as early as necessary to get the job done and stay as late at night as necessary to get the job done. Nobody is going to outwork me. I’ll set that kind of tone and tenor of honesty.

Prioritization of the law enforcement dollar is one of the main functions of the attorney general. The attorney general is chairman of the prosecutorial advisory council. They take the state budget and the law enforcement section of that and they make sure the commonwealth attorneys’ offices are funded, the county attorneys’ offices are funded. They may have a little more money that they put toward multi-jurisdictional task forces or other special projects they may have.

We’re going to enforce all of the laws, but we’re going to put more money toward some than others. We’re going to focus on the methamphetamine scourge, the crack cocaine scourge, and we’re going to follow the tracks in the snow to where these pharmaceutical companies have been pushing these pills and make them come up with some money for other programs.

How will you achieve greater transparency in state government?

I’d like to meet regularly with other constitutional officers on a regular basis, either once a week or once a month. I don’t know if that’s ever been done. I’d like those discussions to be a matter of public record.

The attorney general is charged with enforcing the open meetings act. I believe that a strong policy of absolutely enforcing the open meetings law will set a good tone.

The attorney general’s opinion is taken very seriously. When interpreting state law, how do you differ from your opponents on matters of law?

I have my opinion about a lot of things. I don’t expect to express it inappropriately or in the wrong context when I occupy the office. When my office is asked to defend a law in the state of Kentucky, we’ll do so to the best of our ability.

However, my oath is to defend the Constitution of the United states and the constitution of the state of Kentucky. I have views on the constitution that I’m sure the other two people do not hold.

Mr. Stumbo wants to add a new layer of police, the Kentucky Bureau of Investigation, his own personal police force. He wants them to have overreaching jurisdiction over local police departments. He wants to fund it with a 13-cent-per-pack cigarette tax.

I, on the other hand, want to get the government off the backs of the people. I am a conservative. I believe, philosophically, in less taxes and smaller government.

My own personal view, if it is appropriate to express in an opinion as attorney general, I will express it based upon my own view of the constitution.

That being said, I believe people’s right of privacy is being violated in many quarters now. Not just from criminals, but from a large government. In your own home, you have rights to which the powers of police do not extend. That’s not my opinion, that’s the law of the state of Kentucky.

For instance, I believe that you have the right, in your home, to smoke marijuana. I don’t believe that violates the law. In 1909, the Kentucky legislature passed a law that said all alcohol in the state was illegal. You couldn’t possess alcohol anywhere in the state. In 1910, in Commonwealth vs. Campbell, and in 1915, in Commonwealth vs. Smith, the Kentucky Supreme Court said that the Kentucky constitution guaranteed you a right to privacy in your home to which the power of police does not extend.

That’s not some folklore with no impact. That’s the standing rule. It’s that rule that keeps the Kentucky State Police from kicking down the doors in 77 dry counties in Kentucky and hauling everyone’s ass to jail that possesses alcohol. My question is, if I have a substance that is demonstrably less harmful than alcohol, don’t I have the same constitutional right in my home? I get plenty of cases dismissed because prosecutors don’t want to challenge me on it.

If you would do so, how would you seek the death penalty as attorney general?

I’m for it. As a defense attorney, I’m very sensitive to the possibility of putting an innocent person to death. If that were a possibility, I’d look at the circumstances of the case four or five times if I had a say in it. There are some situations where the identity of the assailant is not in doubt, the severity of the crime is not in doubt. The people have a right to put a person to death. I think it’s a deterrent. There’s no doubt about that. That person, at least, isn’t going to kill anyone else.

Mandatory minimum sentencing requirements?

I’m against them. As often as I’ve been ruled against in the courtroom, I trust the judge. I trust the system that places the judge there with the discretion that they have. In the long run, having that elected individual pass sentence based on community standards and the expectations of the people around them, that’s the ultimate of being judged by your peers.

There’s too much demagoguery played with the war on crime and the war on drugs. I’m afraid the legislature can get carried away trying to show how tough they can be, and they could pass more draconian laws than exist now.

Social Insecurity

By Caleb O. Brown
Snitch Staff Writer

“The sign out front says these are supposed to be our twilight years,” says Vickie Taylor of her home, the J.O. Blanton House at Eighth Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard. “The board and management of this place are making them our nightmare years.”

Taylor sits in her apartment talking with friends, now colleagues, in an effort to fix dozens of problems they claim plague their home. Some residents say safety has sharply declined, leading some to carry knives, icepicks and handguns when they venture downstairs to do laundry.

The residents gathered with Taylor serve on what they call the “Committee for Concerned Residents,” a group formed by the Resident Council at Blanton House. The group says the home’s board of directors has been unresponsive to claims of poor security and other problems on the premises.

Taylor says, “We told them this building was full of dope addicts, sex offenders and prostitutes.”

Lucille Hall, another resident, says she routinely sees drug addicts in the halls and “the security people can’t do anything.”

Ann Pruitt moved into Blanton House three years ago and said she felt it was a safe place for her to live. She says her son now routinely offers to bring her a pistol so she can protect herself.

“All our sons are saying they’ll bring us guns,” says Taylor.

Three floors up, Vivian Gibson says she moved into Blanton house Dec. 2, 1972, and she’s noticed a decline in her own feeling of safety only in the last three years.

“You’re afraid to go to the garbage room to drop off your garbage. Used to be no problem taking it down there at two or three in the morning. Not anymore.”

The risks are not lost on Carlos Lynes, who is the chairman of the Blanton House board of directors.

“They complain that people are coming in with drugs,” he says. “I’m sure it’s happening. It wouldn’t surprise me at all, but none of that has been substantiated. Without proof, we can’t do anything.”

Lynes says he doesn’t understand why residents are carrying firearms in the building.

“The place is secure,” he says.

“That’s his opinion, but he’s only there once a month,” says another Blanton House board member who refused to be named for this story. “The police got rid of some drug dealers and prostitutes, but when the police left, those people came back. I want to see the place safe for our residents. It’s their home.”

At least part of the fight between residents and the board of directors is over who provides security to the building. Just four months ago, Lynes says, the board moved to allow off-duty Louisville police officers serve as security guards on weekends. Lynes says the police presence was a response to residents who claimed they’d witnessed drug activity in the building. Since switching from off-duty cops to a private security firm - Commonwealth Security - Lynes says residents have gotten angry.

“All of this has happened since we got rid of the Louisville Police Department,” Lynes says. “Three years ago, we didn’t have security in the building. I don’t think the situation has changed that much in that time. The complaints about security usually come around the first of the month, when people get paid.”

One of those complaints came a year ago, when Lula Ross says she was attacked on Aug. 31.

She says the attacker kept his hands on her throat, repeating “Where’s the money?!” Ross says she fought off the attacker successfully.

Taylor says that attack and other threats serve as reason enough for a police presence in the building. Taylor says Louisville police serving as security in the building are just better at policing the building.

“They knew the players and the hustlers and the dealers and they knew how to stop them,” she says.

Taylor adds that Louisville police are armed and have the ability to arrest people, whereas a security officer for a private firm would have to call the police.

Last month, residents achieved mixed results when they approached the board of directors to deal with issues of security and sanitation in the building.

“We had about 25 people who came up. They voiced their concerns and I have a listing of the complaints. It just so happened that the man who manages the property was there, also. I received from him a letter as to what he has done as far as correcting many of the issues,” Taylor says.

Concerned Residents committee member Ann Pruit says it was more like 30 people, and that they followed up with letters to the board and to the recently hired property management firm, TESCO Properties. TESCO Managing Agent Larry Sisson could not be reached for comment at his office in Germantown, Tenn.

Lynes says he is waiting on proof from residents of drug activity, even though he admits that he’s sure there is some in the building.

“They complained that there was drug activity there,” says Lynes. “They complained about prostitution in the building. We asked them to sign an affidavit, and no one would sign an affidavit. If they know of someone who is pushing drugs or bringing drugs in, those residents can indicate that to management, but they have not done this.”

Pruitt and Taylor say no one has asked them to sign any affidavit about what they have witnessed.

Friendly Fanatics

By Caleb O. Brown
Snitch Staff Writer

5:29 left in the first quarter. The Vikings are up 7-zip against the rival Green Bay Packers. Veteran Packer fan Carol Krebs sits at Dutch’s Tavern wearing several strands of beads and a #4 Brett Favre jersey, her hands crossed in her lap.

“It’s not normally this quiet in here.”

She sighs and whispers, “It’s because we’re losing, that’s why.”

The stage at Dutch’s is bare, save the large pull-down screen telling viewers, whether they like it or not, “The NFC is on FOX.”

On the front row of Dutch’s makeshift sideline sits “Spike.”

Outside football season he’s known as Wayne Baxter. At Dutch’s he’s Spike, a fan permanently tagged with Packer tattoos on each arm, his wrists taped, his body draped in a #38 Packers jersey. Spike, not Wayne, rarely sits still in the green folding chair he brought from home as he shouts occasional obscenities at the screen.

Behind the bar sits the vaunted Grant-Lombardi trophy, a strange mix of a mannequin head, a cheesehead hat and Viking horns all painted up purple and green. Dutch’s has the honor of keeping the trophy, at least for now.

Down the block and across the street at Gerstle’s, Viking fans — the so-called Derby City Norsemen — can’t wait to deflower Green Bay’s newly renovated Lambeau Field with a severe thumping for the Packers.

Norseman Ken Rowan spent part of the first half yelling “Take that, Packer fan!” to one of the few Green Bay backers in Gerstle’s. As Eddie Johnson splits the uprights with a 46-yard field goal, making it 17-3 in favor of the Vikings, Rowan is grinning from ear to ear.

“I hate the Packers so much,” he chuckles, schadenfreude smeared across his face. “They won a bunch of championships when it didn’t matter, and now they think they’re gods.”

Behind Dutch’s, fans throw around a football, lamenting their poor Packers first-half turnovers.

“Brett’s throwin’ at things that don’t exist,” Spike says. “He’s havin’ a horrible day. No sooner do we get some passing and we get picked off.”

12:30 left in the third. Vikes fans bellow “Oooh!” as the Packer quarterback’s bad day continues. Favre is sacked.

Mike Summers, a Norseman, says he can smell the trophy making the one-block trek back to Gerstle’s but wants to wait a little longer before making any predictions.

“It’s in our grasp, but there’s still time left.”

1:30 left in the third. Packers drive for a touchdown, but the Vikings are still up by 16.

The green-and-yellow crowd at Dutch’s begins to chant, “Spike! Spike! Spike!”

He swaggers onto the stage, puts on his Packers helmet, pauses, then throws down a green and yellow plastic football, cueing the cheers of his fellow fans.
Spike and his wife, Candice, got married in Dutch’s Tavern. It was, Candice says, a “Packer-themed” wedding.

Vikes fail in a charge toward the end zone, but a field goal makes it 30-11.

Fairweather Packers fans begin to drift out the front door.

9:23 left in the fourth quarter. A desperate Packers fan screams, “Don’t huddle up, you don’t have all f***ing day!”

Elizabeth Naze, decked out in her Green Bay earrings, says — despite the score — being at Dutch’s is almost like being at Lambeau Field. She’s from Green Bay and has lived in Louisville for about six months.

“I’m less homesick when I’m here,” she says.

Even though she’s sensing the outcome will not be to her liking, Naze still finds Louisville’s Vikes fans to be “far more tame” than those up north.

“They get a little mean,” she says. “They’re actually worse than Raiders fans.”
Steve Johnson, a longtime Dutch’s Packers fan, now resigned to the outcome, says, “They’ll be here in three or four minutes.”

Two Green Bay touchdowns in the fourth quarter have changed Ken Rowan’s tune. The Norseman is sipping a beer and rhetorically preparing himself for the worst.

“This is way more intense than it should be,” Rowan says. “We outplayed them for three quarters. Now we suddenly have a game on our hands. If we lose this, it’s a fluke. It’s just a fluke.”

But the Vikings hang on, and as the clock ticks down to 30 seconds with Minnesota up by five, Norseman Dan McGowan blows the horn, beckoning his brethren to trek to Dutch’s to seize the prize.

Down and across Shelbyville Road, a purple throng chanting “Here we go, Vikings! Here we go!” makes its way into Dutch’s.

“Give it up!” yells a fan, as a bartender takes down the trophy and hands it over. The rowdy fans grab the symbol of supremacy and shuffle back to home base.

Sports broadcaster Dave Jennings, a Packers fan who spent the game with gloating Vikes fans, says the game isn’t really the important thing.

“Football’s back, that’s what matters. Win or lose, at least I’m not watching the World’s Strongest Man Competition on ESPN2.”

Insight gives broadband users fair warning

By Caleb O. Brown
Snitch Staff Writer

Late last month, Insight Communications e-mailed its broadband Internet customers to detail the role the company “is required to play in enforcing copyrights.”

Insight’s compliance with subpoenas issued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and other copyright holders could end in federal lawsuits for customers who share and download music using peer-to-peer networks.

“We’re caught in the middle,” said Amanda Kahler, a call center manager for tech support at Insight’s Louisville offices.

Kahler said Insight has been placed in an “unfortunate” situation by the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), a federal law meant to protect copyright owners.

In its e-mail notice, the company announced that it may be forced to comply with portions of the act that allow copyright holders to subpoena records relating to possible copyright infringement. The subpoenas themselves do not have to be issued by judges and they are not attached to any legal proceeding.

In addition to shutting down a customer’s access to the Internet, the company told users that it, like all other Internet Service Providers, “may also be required ... to disclose the infringing customers’ identity to the copyright holder.”

Slashdot.org user “diersing,” who asked other users if they’d received the e-mail, asked, “Am I the only one that sees a difference between a police agency with a warrant in hand asking who’s who and the damn ‘copyright holder’? Shouldn’t there be a burden of proof before my privacy is violated?”

Kahler said Insight is concerned about its customers’ privacy, adding, “We’re very particular about the subpoenas that we’ll consider valid. It has to meet certain criteria.”

Verizon, Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have challenged the subpoenas for different reasons. U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota has written a letter to the RIAA hinting that it may be abusing its newfound subpoena power.

Boston College and MIT won a round in federal court this month when a judge ruled that the RIAA could not serve subpoenas aimed at students suspected of illegal file-sharing. The subpoenas were issued in Washington, D.C., but served in Massachusetts. The two colleges have refused to name the students.

Verizon has been less successful. The communications giant initially moved to quash a subpoena issued by the RIAA. The association had requested the identity of a Verizon customer who used the KaZaa filesharing service to share copyrighted material. Verizon lost the initial case, and was forced to turn over the name while it pursues an appeal.

Sen. Coleman is among critics who argue that the recording industry has been far too aggressive in its attempts to stop illegal file-sharing. Coleman, a former roadie for a rock band, has accused RIAA of being excessive in issuing subpoenas. He said he will hold hearings examining the industry’s authority in enforcing copyright.

On Monday, The Associated Press reported that the RIAA has altered its position, saying it will now sue only those users who have downloaded a “substantial amount” of music. The group declined to define “substantial.”

“Through the end of July, the recording industry says it served 1,075 subpoenas to ISPs demanding information about end users,” said Wendy Seltzer, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “That onslaught is continuing now in August.”

Seltzer says EFF’s main objection to the subpoenas — a provision of the 1998 copyright act — is that they are not issued by a judge and that they don’t have to be attached to any pending legal proceedingas other subpoenas must be.

Seltzer called the subpoenas “fishing expeditions. No judge ever sees them,” she said.

DEA, under pressure to reform itself, may soon shift focus again

By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer (Snitch)

“My job has nothing to do with enforcement,” says Milt Galanos, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s newest special agent in Louisville. Galanos, hired just two weeks ago to focus solely on demand reduction for Kentucky, says his job is to “create bad public relations for drugs.”

Galanos says he’s far from being a federal version of a “D.A.R.E. cop,” visiting schools, and preaching the fire-and-brimstone dangers of illicit drugs. He says his efforts include brainstorming with local authorities to come up with education and other initiatives, especially in communities ravaged by methamphetamine and OxyContin abuse.

Galanos joined the DEA in 1988, working as a diversion investigator, checking manufacturers’ inventories to make sure controlled substances weren’t falling into the wrong hands. Now that he’s a special agent focused on cutting drug demand, Galanos says he’s making contacts.

“I’ve tried to contact all the prevention centers throughout the state. I’ve spoken with one in Paducah. I’m just trying to get myself known as a resource in the state.”

Galanos and his job are part of the DEA’s changing face under the Bush administration. His placement in Louisville was part of an initiative launched by former DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson, who wanted demand reduction coordinators in each state. Hutchinson has since left for the Department of Homeland Security.

Tony King, Louisville DEA’s field office director, says Hutchinson breathed new life into demand-reduction efforts. King says that under the Clinton administration and DEA Administrator Tom Constantine, demand reduction simply “floated down toward the bottom on the list of priorities.”

And now that Hutchinson has left the agency, King and Galanos are left to wonder what newly sworn DEA chief Karen Tandy will bring to the table.

Tandy has pledged that she will focus primarily on dismantling large, international drug rings — attacking the supply of drugs — though she hasn’t said much about her domestic agenda.

“Different administrators have different focuses,” says King. “We had a program where agents worked in South America trying to disrupt cartels. Constantine’s focus was domestic enforcement. Hutchinson’s was demand reduction coupled with foreign and domestic enforcement. It ebbs and flows. Until they deny me money, which they haven’t so far, I’ll just wait and see. We’ll do the best with what they give us.”

For fiscal 2003, Congress appropriated $1.9 billion for the DEA.

The agency’s website indicates that Tandy, a former federal prosecutor, is very interested in enforcement. DEA’s website notes that when Tandy was head of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force at the Department of Justice, one of her prosecutions “led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that attorneys’ fees are subject to forfeiture notwithstanding the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.”

Tandy, after her confirmation last week, indicated that she knows the criticism of DEA is that the agency has “lost focus” and that she’ll work to restore it.

King and Galanos won’t say if they think demand reduction will be a key part of Tandy’s focus.

King says one complicating factor is a recent federal performance audit of hundreds of agencies, including the DEA.

The review rated DEA as “results not demonstrated,” shorthand for “DEA is unable to demonstrate its progress in reducing the availability of illegal drugs in the U.S.” The report found that while DEA does have performance measures, “DEA managers are not held accountable for achieving results.”

The report gave DEA a rating of zero for accountability.

“How do you measure the influence you have on a kid?” King asks. “If Milt goes to a high school, they keep statistics on how many hours he spends doing presentations, but how do we know the overall impact? That’s the difficulty in demand reduction.”

Ultimately, King says, “Performance reviews like these mean more paperwork for people like me.”

Ravers face the music with new law

By Caleb O. Brown
Staff Writer

Since his conviction and subsequent jail time for possession of a half-gram of psilocybin mushrooms, 21-year old Adam Jones decided he would get involved in the drug reform movement.

Jones had organized a rally/concert for a medical marijuana ballot initiative being promoted by two groups, Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the Montana chapter of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He made arrangements with the Fraternal Order of Eagles Lodge in Billings, Mont., and arranged to have several bands play to help raise money.

Just a few hours before the event, according to John Masterson, Montana NORML’s director, a DEA agent approached the manager of the lodge with a copy of a new federal law in hand, stating that if the event were to take place as planned, agents would stay and see if any illegal drug use took place. If it did, the manager was told, not only would the event be shut down, the lodge itself could be held liable for a quarter-million-dollar civil fine.

After consulting the lodge’s lawyer, the event was canceled.

“It was alarming to me, due to the fact that there was no crime committed,” Masterson said. “There was no criminal behavior. But through a sort of intimidation tactic, the political speech inherent in a fund-raiser was quashed.”

The special agent in charge for the DEA told The Billings Gazette that the agent had acted of his own accord but also said he thought it was safe to say “the kind of audience attracted to NORML concerts are typically a marijuana-using crowd.”

That event sent up a warning flag in the drug reform community that this new law - popularly known as the RAVE Act - had claimed its first victim. For those opposed to the Drug War, the problem was that DEA’s threat was not hurled at an event planned “for the purpose of drug consumption,” as the law states would be required for prosecution, but one organized for the purpose of political speech: a fund-raiser for a state ballot initiative.

The RAVE Act’s provisions were never debated in Congress because the provision was tacked onto the Amber Alert bill in conference committee. That bill, designed to create a nationwide system to help recover missing children, was signed that bill into law with great fanfare in April by President Bush. The RAVE Act - or its more contemporary name, the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act of 2003 - was sort of a legislative stowaway.

Its defenders say it’s meant to go after “irresponsible rave promoters” and “return the rave scene to what it was supposed to be.”

Critics charge it will give federal authorities “the tools to discriminate” against activity - especially political activism and rallies - they don’t like.

Some members of Congress were unaware of precisely what the provision was supposed to do. When Snitch asked Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) if he’d voted for the Amber Alert bill, he responded, “Of course,” but then said he didn’t know enough about the RAVE Act provisions to discuss them in depth.

Precursors

The RAVE Act is a bit of a misnomer. When it was introduced in 2002 under that acronym (that’s Reducing American’s Vulnerability to Ecstasy), it quickly gained a reputation in the rave community as something that could send raves back into the unventilated, unsafe warehouses that first brought the dance parties to prominence.

According to bill sponsor Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), the act was created in response to four cases brought by federal prosecutors using the “crackhouse statute” to charge promoters and owners of music venues with providing their facilities for the purpose of drug consumption.

That law allowed prosecutors to go after the owners of crackhouses if they knew about and benefited from the drug trade, even though they may not have handled the drugs themselves. Biden said that the law’s limitations made it difficult to get convictions, and he cited the cases in Boise, Idaho, Little Rock, Ark., New Orleans and Panama City, Fla., saying prosecutors had scored two victories, a loss and a draw.

As a result of the RAVE Act, the crackhouse statute no longer refers only to landlords who “open or maintain any place” for the purpose of drug consumption, but also those who “open, lease, rent, use, or maintain any place, whether permanently or temporarily,” for the purpose of drug consumption.

Critics say there’s a world of difference between those two phrases and that the new language will allow prosecutors to go after raves, which are, by definition, temporary events that may not exist a day later.

But the law moves further from the original statute, stating that owners, renters, managers and others no longer have to profit from drug activity in order to face charges. The specific language states that they must (take a deep breath) “manage or control any place, whether permanently or temporarily, either as an owner, lessee, agent, employee, occupant, or mortgagee, and knowingly and intentionally rent, lease, profit from, or make available for use, with or without compensation, the place for the purpose of unlawfully manufacturing, storing, distributing, or using a controlled substance.” Whew.

Critics say that language could - depending on interpretation - include people who were not engaged in the drug trade at all.

The RAVE Act also holds those promoters and owners liable in civil court for violations, something that essentially lowers to burden of proof in order to get a conviction. Those found liable in civil court would not go to jail, but could be put out of business and bankrupted.

The ACLU's Graham Boyd testified at what he said was the sole hearing on the bill in 2002. He said he was the only witness speaking in opposition. He said the three supporting witnesses “basically didn’t talk about the bill at all. They just talked about how ecstasy was a bad, dangerous drug.”

Boyd worked for the ACLU on the New Orleans case, the outcome of which Biden termed a “draw” for federal prosecutors.

Promoters held a rave at the State Palace Theater in New Orleans. According to Boyd, they were aware of the drug use and took efforts to stop it but weren’t successful. They were then indicted under the crackhouse statute.

The Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund said on its website that the New Orleans case was the first application of the crackhouse statute to a concert venue and “the first case to name pacifiers and glow sticks as drug paraphernalia.”

But prosecutors, according to Boyd, made few claims about how the venue owners were involved in the drug trade.

“Prosecutors admitted that the owners were not involved in drug dealing and were not benefiting from the drug dealing,” he said. “It wasn’t a conspiracy that they were somehow engaged in.”

The case was a draw for prosecutors, according to Boyd, because they were unable to get one of the promoters to cop a plea.

“They had to settle for getting the corporation to pay a fine and getting the venue to ban glow sticks and pacifiers and so forth,” he said. “In the end, a federal court even enjoined that, saying it was a violation of the rights of audience members.”

The DEA, Biden and others point to the Little Rock and Boise cases as reasons for expanding the crackhouse statute. But Boyd said those cases featured defendants who were not only accused of knowing about drug use, but also with drug conspiracies.

“These were people who allegedly were hiring drug dealers to sell drugs at their events and taking part of the profits,” he said.

There is a huge difference between attempting to stop drug use and not fully succeeding and actively engaging in the drug trade as you run a music event, Boyd said.

“If you’re a drug dealer, the fact that you’re running a concert is no defense. That’s not what the First Amendment is about. If you’re a drug dealer, you’re a drug dealer.”

Civil fights

Biden said this year, “The purpose of my legislation is not to prosecute legitimate law-abiding managers of stadiums, arenas, performing arts centers, licensed beverage facilities and other venues because of incidental drug use.”

Instead, he insisted, the act was aimed at “rogue promoters who not only know that there is drug use at their event but also hold the event for the purpose of illegal drug use or distribution. That is quite a high bar.”

Not high enough for the critics, who claim the civil penalties imposed by the law lower the standard of evidence enough to threaten many legitimate businesses.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) dropped his sponsorship of the bill, saying, “The provision allowing civil suits dramatically increases the potential liability of business owners. … We have been told that even conscientious promoters may think twice before holding large concerts or other events where some drug use may be inevitable despite their best efforts.”

Bill Piper with the Drug Policy Alliance says many of the provisions that business owners have taken to prevent drug-related fatalities at their events may fall by the wayside.

“Business owners are simply going to say, ‘No more bottled water and no more paramedics on scene,’” he said. “Having those things on hand will be used against a club owner in a court of law.”

Piper added that even what would otherwise qualify as a responsible business practice might, under the RAVE Act, qualify as evidence of knowledge of drug activity.

“The threat isn’t just people on drugs like ecstasy, the threat is to all customers, even those simply dancing for hours at a time who might need a medic or bottled water.”

And Piper claimed that businesses, fearful of federal prosecution, might simply get out of the business of promoting music that may tend to attract drug users. He said that could be dangerous for those who will go to raves anyway.

“We’re just getting to the point where raves are mainstream, where it can be safe and regulated,” he said. “If a nightclub is too afraid to hold an all-night dance party for fear of prosecution, the demand for these types of events isn’t going to go away. Promoters will just hold them elsewhere. No security guards, no running water and no ambulance on call. That’s a recipe for disaster even if there are no drugs involved.”

Balderdash, says Howard Simon with the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

He said the anti-drug law will “get the bad apples out of the way - promoters who welcome drug use at their venues.”

He said concerns that legitimate businesses will be shut down are overblown.

“The crackhouse statute hasn’t put landlords out of business,” he said. “People who have welcomed drug use to the scene have.”

Simon said the critics of the drug laws continually claim that they want “common sense applied” to the drug problem. He said they have little faith that laws, when passed, will be applied with discretion.

“If we make the assumption that the law will be applied with common sense and discretion, I don’t think responsible club owners have anything to worry about.”

Testing the waters

Opponents of the RAVE Act seem to universally admit that they don’t know how the law may be applied, but they say they’ll be watching federal prosecutors closely.

Masterson of Montana’s NORML says his group and the Fraternal Order of Eagles Lodge have been in contact with attorneys from various civil rights groups and said they’ll soon seek a federal injunction to stop enforcement of the law until its constitutionality is addressed.

“Not every rave will be targeted by this,” said Boyd, “but prosecutors in some parts of the country may go after business people who are putting on an event that they don’t like, who are doing something that is not itself illegal, but where drug use is going to go on.”

Boyd said the ACLU fought at length with the sponsors of the bill to clarify language that may lead prosecutors - and judges - to assume that if an owner knows of drug use at his venue, that would be enough for a conviction. He said the bill sponsors refused to make that change.

The key argument surrounding this expansion of the crackhouse law, according to Boyd, is that the law is open-ended enough to criminalize a great deal of activity if knowledge is the standard that is used.

“I can’t imagine that college deans will get prosecuted for knowing about drug use in a dormitory, but it gives the police and prosecutors the power to basically decide who they don’t like, who they think is in need of being shut down. And they can selectively do that. It gives them the tools to discriminate.”