DRUG DRAMA: THE BIG CHILL

Imagine yourself tucked away from the world, safe and sound in your home.

You're far from the madding crowd. But in a few heart-stopping moments,
your world is shattered. In an instant, you're shot dead in the middle of
your American dream that turned, without warning, into a chilling
nightmare. A nightmare where the good guys are the bad guys, and it is all
very real.

Donald P. Scott, 61, was shot to death in his home on the 200-acre ranch he
shared with his wife near Malibu, Calf. Scott wasn't a fugitive when he was
killed by a Los Angeles County deputy sheriff on Oct. 2, 1992.

Scott wasn't breaking any laws. Scott reacted to his wife's screams when
members of a multijurisdictional drug task force broke down his door and
entered his home in a military-style raid.

By turning a corner and pointing a handgun, he faced his judge, jury and
executioner-the U. S. Government.

That is how the country's war on drugs affected Donald Scott. Scott didn't
have time to "just say no." Scott was an innocent man minding his business
when the government, acting on an unsubstantiated tip, stormed his property
looking for marijuana plants. That's what the drug officers wanted to find
to justify seizing Scott's ranch under civil forfeiture statutes: 14
marijuana plants. They found nothing. But, Scott's death was ruled justifiable.

Dying with him were the rights guaranteed to every American under the U.S.
Constitution.

According to information from Eric Blumenson and Eva Nilsen in "Policing
for Profit: The Drug War's Hidden Economic Agenda" (University of Chicago
Law Review, 1997), the Ventura County District Attorney reported the main
purpose of the raid was to "garner the proceeds expected from forfeiture of
the $5-million ranch."

Documents provided to officers before the raid included an appraisal and a
parcel map of the ranch. A later investigation found the search warrant was
issued on insufficient information. There was never any evidence supporting
marijuana cultivation on Scott's ranch.

Donald Scott's case may be one of the more dramatic war stories, but his
isn't isolated. This business of law enforcement seizing property to
finance its war on drugs is flawed. The system is designed for abuse.

The Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments protect citizens from unreasonable
search and seizures, taking of private property without just compensation
and unreasonable fines and punishment. However, civil forfeiture laws focus
on property, and property does not have a Bill of Rights. Government is
able to confiscate property suspected of use in a variety of criminal
activities.

The federal statutes have been broadened to include more than drug- related
crimes. State legislatures have raced to keep up with federal laws. Several
years ago, the United States Supreme Court denied Tina Bennis's innocent
owner defense and allowed law enforcement to take her car. Bennis had
committed no crime. Her husband, John Bennis, was arrested after Detroit
police officers watched him engage in sex with a prostitute in his car. The
state sued the couple and declared the car a public nuisance. The state of
Michigan took the car. The Supreme Court held that Tina Bennis's innocence
was irrelevant.

Blumenson and Nilsen say "both crime prevention and due process goals of
our criminal justice are compromised when salaries, continued tenure,
equipment, modernization and budget depend on how much money can be
generated by forfeiture."

In addition to the abuses of power that killed ordinary citizen Donald
Scott, these statutes enable the real bad guys, the drug kingpins, to buy
their freedom by simply relinquishing valuable assets. Information from
Blumenson and Nilsen report that 80 percent of all seizures go without
criminal prosecution. It is little wonder approximately 60 percent of the
prison population are minor players in the drug drama.

The government has succeeded in undermining and circumventing the
constitutional rights of its citizenship for profit in the name of
protection. Opposition is unpopular. Sane critics many times are exiled
into political "no-man's land" or at the very least called anti-law
enforcement.

This is the wrong way to fund law enforcement.

Lord Chief Justice of England, Baron Lane, wrote at the end of the 20th
Century: "Loss of freedom seldom happens overnight. Oppression doesn't
stand on the doorstep with a toothbrush, moustache and swastika armband-it
creeps up insidiously. . .step by step, and all of a sudden the unfortunate
citizen realizes that it is gone."

After the events of Sept. 11, the nation is ripe for far-reaching abuse of
civil rights.

While our citizenry has necessarily agreed to tougher scrutiny, we must
remain vigilant in protecting what our government says its willing to fight
for: freedom and the protections of those freedoms as guaranteed by the
Bill of Rights.