DAMRELL RULING CHALLENGES HARSH DRUG PROSECUTION

Justice isn't just about arresting, prosecuting and punishing the bad guys.
It's also about fairness and proportionality.

When U.S. District Judge Frank Damrell Jr., a former Modesto attorney, set
aside a guilty verdict against two illegal Mexican immigrants in a
marijuana-growing case last week because he feared "a serious miscarriage
of justice may have occurred," the judge raised legitimate doubts about the
fairness of federal drug prosecutions in this region.

Damrell described the defendants in this case as virtually penniless,
likely illiterate and probably illegal (immigrants). They testified that
they'd been lured into a job tending marijuana plants in a national forest
and were kept against their will by armed men who threatened to kill them
if they tried to escape. When federal agents raided the pot-growing
operation two years ago, only the Mexican laborers were captured. The
principals had fled.

Rather than deport the men or prosecute them as low-level drug dealers in
state courts, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California
prosecuted them under draconian federal anti-drug laws. The guilty verdict
returned by the jury condemned the two young men with no prior criminal
history to mandatory minimum sentences of at least 10 years. If the story
the men told of being held under duress was true -- and the judge concluded
that the preponderance of the evidence presented strongly suggests that it
was -- a serious miscarriage of justice did occur.

To grant a motion for acquittal, Damrell would have had to discount every
theory of the government's case, something that legally he cannot do.
Instead, he issued a stunning ruling that turned the defense motion for
acquittal into his own motion for a new trial, an action unprecedented in
the 9th Circuit. It may not survive appeal.

Whether the judge is on firm ground legally or not, his action sheds light
on questionable federal drug prosecution policies. How does it serve
justice to send to prison what are, at most, low-level operatives, if not
actual victims of the drug traders, while the higher-ups who use the
defendants as expendable throw-aways go free?