GOOD SAMARITAN YIELDS TO CRACK

He started out four years ago trying to help people break their crack
addictions but got hooked himself.

He wound up being taken prisoner in the drug war, but said he is clean
now and wants to contribute to our on-going discussion of the criminal
justice system. Wants to tell us what he has been through, what he has
seen, what he faces.

Ted Caster was a family man with young children. He was a
college-educated engineer with an aluminum roofing business and
several rental property investments. He was busy but found time to
serve as church music director.

"There was a crack motel in front of the church and I got to know some
of the people that lived there," he wrote from Harris County Jail. "I
wanted to do battle for the Lord and had a deep compassion for those
caught in the addiction of crack."

But he found that most of those he tried to help "just used me to
enable themselves to use more drugs. They told me I just did not
understand the power of their addiction."

`Changed Practically Overnight'

He thought the way to understand was to try the stuff. That was in
October of 1996. Ted's wife of 11 years, Donna, said he "changed
practically overnight." A couple of days before Thanksgiving he told
her he had been smoking crack, but promised not to any more. He soon
broke that promise.

"The next year was a nightmare," Donna said. "Ted never smoked crack
at home, but he would be gone from home for weeks at a time. When he
was gone he did not sleep or eat, just smoked crack. He looked like he
had been living in a concentration camp."

Ted spent their money on drugs, lost his business, sold off much of
the rental property, ran up debt. Donna said he was arrested three
times in Texas and once in Colorado, each time for possession of less
than a gram of cocaine. She wanted to get him in a program and asked
the courts to sentence him to drug treatment instead of jail.

The Colorado courts agreed, but in Houston the deal was a
plea-bargained four months in jail. Donna said that after he got out,
Ted told her he was confident he no longer had a problem.

"Actually," she said, "he was much better, but he still had a problem.
... Part of the reason he would fall is that he had such compassion
for those he knew who were dying of crack. At this point he wanted to
stop, but would fail again and again."

Ted said some undercover officers he had made friends with finally
helped him get away from drugs. He said he met several of them who
"face the problems of their own addictions," and who have become
disillusioned with the judicial system's treatment of drug users.

"Addicts should be treated, not separated from whatever life they have
left and put in jail," he said. "It is getting to the point that a
veteran narcotics officer is ashamed to arrest an addict. They often
sympathize with them and do everything they can to help them as long
as the addict is trying to quit."

However, he said that many users get busted and jailed near the end of
a fiscal quarter, when task forces conduct what are commonly referred
to as "duck hunts," making a bunch of felony arrests to justify their
existence and budgets.

Not Guilty This Time, He Says

Although he admits to his addiction and prior arrests, Ted said he is
not guilty of charges that currently have him in jail. He said that a
year ago he was convicted after a "crumb of cocaine" was found in the
upholstery of a car in which he was a passenger. The driver of the car
later confessed, but a motion for a new trial was denied and Ted said
he is "still waiting for the court of appeals to appoint me a lawyer
so that the appeal can be written."

In December, while free on bond in that case, he was arrested after
police stopped him for a traffic violation, searched his pickup, and
found under the seat a razor blade bearing cocaine residue. Ted said
it was not his and that the passenger in his pickup must have put it
there.

He said he refused a plea bargain that would have had him doing six
months, which would have been up a few days from now and he could have
gone home to his family.

"I feel the judge is trying to force me to plead guilty by making me
stay in jail until I'm found innocent," he said.

So there you have the condensed version of the first part of one
veteran's drug war story. Ted said he'll tell us the next part when it
happens.