WHEN INNOCENCE IS NO EXCUSE

Mandatory Minimums Tie Hands Of Judges

Independent trucker Al Dilts, 66, had hauled eight loads for the same
customer -- "a clean-cut fellow" -- over a period of a year and a half.
All construction equipment. It was good money for an $18,000-a-year
owner-operator.

Mr. Dilts now admits he probably didn't ask enough questions.

On Feb. 17, 1999, a Texas cop pulled over his rig and asked if he could
search the steamroller Mr. Dit's was hauling. As a recent Knight Ridder
story revealed, the steamroller turned out to conceal 556 pounds of
marijuana.

Prosecutors later lauded the cooperation Mr. Dilts showed from that
moment forward, telling the judge he cooperated truthfully and fully
despite the "danger and risk of injury to himself and his family."

No matter. Mr. Dilts -- the only person ever charged in the case -- had
his truck seized and sold at auction. He spent his retirement savings on
lawyers. The judge had no choice under federal mandatory minimum
sentence guidelines but to send him to Leavenworth for 30 months.

What benefit do taxpayers receive for the more than $40,000 per year
they will spend keeping this old man locked up (without even counting
the cost of his prosecution)? Does anyone think the dope runners will
have trouble finding other unwitting "mules" to haul their concealed
shipments to willing buyers?

In 1986, 38 percent of the federal prison population was inside for
drug-related convictions. Today, that figure has risen to about 60
percent, according to Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

Mandatory minimum drug sentences fritter away money and resources,
crowding the prisons until real violent offenders -- rapists and
murderers -- often do less time than a guy like Al Dilts.

But these laws also do something that's much harder to measure. If going
to prison can happen to anyone -- despite the testimony of police and
prosecutors that the defendant had no criminal intent -- it becomes a
kind of reverse lottery. It could happen to anyone. And if good
intentions won't keep you out of prison, what's the incentive to obey
the law when no one's looking?

In a nation where we could once count on our neighbors to be decent and
civil, where it was assumed most folks would pay their taxes and turn in
lost wallets, the corrosive effects of turning a larger and larger slice
of America into a subculture of "ex-cons" and their families, stripped
of any faith in fairness or justice, has yet to be measured.

Or has it? Maybe we measure it every time we lock our doors at night,
refusing to open them to strangers, and forbidding our daughters to walk
to the store alone after dark. After all, "they" are out there --
millions of them, the people we've imprisoned for violating laws our
grandparents never dreamed of.