PROSECUTOR'S COMMENTS ON DRUGS STUN LEGISLATORS

Blames Convictions On Port, Immigrants

AUSTIN -- A Harris County prosecutor raised eyebrows among state lawmakers,
attributing the county's disproportionately high number of minor drug
possession convictions to cocaine entering through the Port of Houston and
to Central and South American immigrants living in Houston.

Chuck Noll, the district attorney's state legislative liaison, also
surprised some listeners this week with an anecdote that some interpreted
as meaning that people like him should not go to prison for minor drug
possession.

The comments stunned the chairman of the House Corrections Committee and an
American Civil Liberties Union representative hearing testimony on House
Bill 2668.

The bill seeks to ease prison crowding by placing offenders caught with
less than an ounce of a controlled substance in a treatment program rather
than in the prison system.

"I thought the response was a little bit odd," said state Rep. Ray Allen,
R-Grand Prairie, who authored the bill and chairs the Corrections
Committee. "It didn't seem to me to answer the question."

Allen had asked Noll why 48.7 percent of the Texas inmates serving
sentences for possessing less than a gram of drugs came from Harris County.

Noll testified that the port "brings us a pretty large problem with drugs,"
referring to the cocaine traffic entering the county via the waterway.

"We have a population which is closely tied to South and Central America,
where cultural ideas about the use of some of these substances is far
different from the normal overall Texas point of view," Noll testified.

In explaining his testimony, Noll, who is white, said drug dealers realize
that the stigma on the drug trade is not as great among South and Central
Americans as it is among others in this country.

"I'm not trying to suggest that because someone is Hispanic, that they're
more inclined to be a drug addict," Noll said Thursday. "The problem is
that drug dealers barge into these communities and dump these drugs."

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, two-thirds of all
cocaine entering the United States come across the border with Mexico from
San Diego to Brownsville. Most of the rest enters through Florida.

Also during his testimony, Noll told about being at the Harris County Jail
intake office when a black man was brought in after passing out in a ditch
with two rocks of crack cocaine in his pocket.

"He's my age, still had hair, salt-and-pepper fellow, never been in trouble
in his life," said Noll. "And I'm looking at him saying, 'There's something
.. this man doesn't need to go to prison.' "

Based on his assessment, Noll said, those types of offenders are routinely
given deferred adjudication rather than jail time.

Anne del Llano, of the ACLU of Texas, said statistics show the amount of
drugs used is not higher or lower based on skin color.

She also objected to his comments about the arrested man, saying Noll
seemed to be saying that people who "looked like him" shouldn't be sent to
prison.

"That's the prosecution that's sending half of these cases to prison," she
told committee members.

Noll said he used that example only to show how jail time is unnecessary in
cases in which someone has led a clean life and then has a moment of
weakness at age 50 or older.

"If you can get through that point in your life and then fall victim to
this drug, that's a difference," he said.