DISTRICT ATTORNEYS TO STOP PROSECUTING DRUG SMUGGLERS

EL PASO, Texas -- Along the United States border with Mexico, district
attorneys say they can't afford to prosecute any more federal drug-
smuggling cases.

The district attorneys say the federal government will have to take
over the cases if it wants to see them prosecuted.

"These are poor counties," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Texas).
"They cannot afford to do the federal work when they don't have the
resources themselves to do this work."

Federal prosecutors take on the felony cases and leave the smaller
cases for local prosecutors to try in state courts. But those little
cases add up - the average of 500 in El Paso County, Texas, each year
cost taxpayers $8 million.

"The federal government needs to step up to the plate, basically," said
Rhonda Cameron, district attorney in Cameron County, Texas. "If they do
not compensate local prosecutors or your local counties for the work
that they do, then they must fund their own people to take care of this
business."

Emergency funds don't cover costs

Last June, after border district attorneys first threatened to stop
prosecuting the drug cases, Congress approved $12 million in emergency
funding to be divided equally among the four border states.

But Texas prosecutors say they can't get their hands on their share of
the funds because the law as written limits reimbursement to "court
costs, courtroom technology, the building of holding spaces,
administrative expenses and indigent defense."

The emergency funds do not reimburse the local governments for pre-
trial incarceration, which account for 75 percent of their costs.

"I don't know why those costs weren't put in that bill," said U.S.
Attorney Bill Blagg. "I wish they would have been put in that bill."

Blagg said that until a long-term solution is worked out, his office
will have to pick up the drug cases that are dropped by county district
attorneys.

To do that, it will have to cut deals with drug smugglers, offering
misdemeanor charges rather than felony ones in exchange for a guilty
plea.