DOUBLE STANDARD OF JUSTICE FOR OFFICIALS WITH DRUGS?

TAKE a look at these recent local-news headlines from Snohomish County:
Drug tests show cocaine on official's clothing - Dantini denies cocaine
use, won't face criminal charges

If you're thinking what I'm thinking, then you remembered these
strikingly similar headlines from King County last year: Drug residue
found on prosecutor - Former deputy prosecutor won't face drug charges

The common denominator shared by these two sets of news items? Our
state Attorney General, whose law enforcers in Olympia let two public
officials escape the tough-on-drugs dragnet.

AG Christine Gregoire may have a national reputation as a hard-nosed
opponent of addictive tobacco products. But her underlings at home
seem unusually lenient when it comes to prosecuting fellow public
servants found in possession of much more dangerous and addictive
substances, such as methamphetamine and cocaine. Take the case of King
County Deputy Prosecutor Will Miller, who was stopped at the King
County Courthouse security entrance last March.

His alibis: I didn't know I had that meth pipe, 10-gram scale, X-acto
knife, package of blades, and baggie of funny powder in my briefcase.
My roommate put it there. And I flunked that lie detector test because
the courthouse made me jittery.

Miller's case was referred to the AG's office by King County to avoid
a conflict of interest. Then, Greg Canova - Gregoire's hyper-political
chief criminal prosecutor, who campaigned against state Supreme Court
Justice Richard Sanders on a relentless "tough on crime" platform -
announced his decision not to file charges against Miller barely two
weeks after losing the election.

The latest legal Houdini is Bob Dantini, Snohomish County treasurer.
Last May, Dantini was arrested at his home for a domestic-violence
incident involving his girlfriend. Police records obtained by Times
reporter Nancy Montgomery showed that the alleged victim, crying and
trembling, called 911 and told deputies that Dantini had assaulted her
because she ripped a vial of cocaine from his pajama pocket and hid it
to stop him from abusing drugs. Both the vial and Dantini's pajama top
tested positive for cocaine.

Dantini's escape-hatch explanations: My girlfriend planted that coke
on my PJs. Her clothes were torn and her knee was bloody because she
tried to assault me. To avoid a conflict of interest, Snohomish County
officials turned over the potential felony drug possession case to the
AG's office (but curiously, not the domestic-violence charge). After
seven months, state attorneys announced last week that they would not
prosecute because the alleged victim refused to testify and her
statements would be inadmissible hearsay.

The Snohomish County prosecutor then dropped plans to prosecute
Dantini for the alleged domestic violence, even though deputies say
the girlfriend exhibited physical signs of assault on the night of the
incident. Dantini claims he held the alleged victim down in
self-defense; he has also reportedly said that she must have put the
drugs on his jammies and that he "never" and "not once" has ever used

coke.

Dantini may be telling the truth, but seasoned public defenders smell
preferential treatment for politicians. Their clients are told to tell
their stories to a jury.

King County public defender Theresa Olson, a 13-year veteran, says
Snohomish County appears "to be operating under a different set of
evidentiary rules than we have in King County or in the state of
Washington." If the alleged domestic-violence victim made statements
when she was distraught and trembling due to the conduct of the
accused, Olson explained to me, the remarks are "excited utterances,"
a well-known exception to the hearsay rule.

Gini Faller, a fellow defender in the felony division of the
Seattle-King County Public Defender Association, adds that she has had
domestic-violence cases "where somebody retracts original statements,
but must cooperate if prosecutors issue a material witness warrant."

Snohomish County Sheriff Rick Bart also told me that localities such
as the city of Everett routinely take domestic-violence cases to court
without cooperating victims.

As for dropping the drug charge despite the physical evidence, King
County public defender Richard Warner says, "It really looks like a
double standard is being applied." Trace residue doesn't make for the
strongest case, he says, but it is regularly grounds for prosecution
of indigent and politically unconnected clients who usually sit in
jail. Defendants in drug cases across the country are routinely
sentenced to lengthy prison terms based on the testimony of snitches
and no physical evidence at all.

The public defenders don't object to the state's compassion for
defendants or critical scrutiny of evidence. "My objection," Faller
says, "is that neither compassion nor critical eyes ever seem to
benefit my clients."

Sheriff Bart, a former narcotics officer himself, voices a similar
concern: "I don't think anybody's above the law. We have to be
consistent, otherwise people won't have respect for the law."

For his part, Dantini told the press that his experience is "a
reminder of how susceptible we are to setbacks in life." Wrong. It's a
stark lesson in how a fortunate few are less accountable to the rule
of law than others.

Michelle Malkin's column appears Tuesday on editorial pages of The
Times. Her e-mail address is: malkin1@ix.netcom.com.