Under Lock and Key RAIL Radio Program for Feb 26 1999

Prisoner exposes the phony drug war
Chicago Tribune says prosecutors lie
10th Circuit Court supports prosecutors buying testimony
Mother of drug war prisoner speaks out on entrapment
"Snitch" documentary exposes Injustice system's use of informants

Welcome to Under Lock and Key, news and commentary about prisons
from the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League. The U.$.
incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other
country. The rate for imprisonment of Blacks is 4 times that of
apartheid South Africa, and the U.$. sends more Black men to
prison than college. The purpose of this program is to educate
about, and inspire activism against, the Amerikan lockdown.

Tyrone. (Track 18) 2:46. Voices of the drug war CD

That recording was made by the November Coalition and released on
a CD entitled Voices from the Drug War. Prisoner's phone calls are
strictly regulated in terms of length and content. In this
instance, however, Tyrone's important message was cut off by the
end of the voicemail system used to record his message.


Even the Chicago Tribune says that prosecutors routinely lie

A Chicago Tribune study of court records has shown what the
Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) has long said:
convictions matter to pig prosecutors more than punishing those
guilty of crimes.

"The records show prosecutors have won convictions against Black
men, hiding evidence that the real killers were white. They also
have prosecuted a wife, hiding evidence that her husband committed
suicide. And they have prosecuted parents, hiding evidence that
their daughter was killed by wild dogs."

Being a prosecutor is a stepping stone to higher elected office in
Amerika. A MIM Notes study reported that of the 50 state governors
and 100 U.$. senators in 1997, 30 were former prosecutors.

According to the Tribune, in the last 36 years "at least 381
defendants have had a homicide conviction thrown out because
prosecutors concealed evidence or presented evidence they knew to
be false".

Sixty-seven of the 381 defendants had been sentenced to death.
Some came within hours of being executed.

These are of course only the cases that were exposed. Many
prisoners can not afford a lawyer to properly appeal their
conviction and so can not ever be released or add to the
statistics mentioned.

Furthermore, convicted murderers are only a tiny portion of those
in prison. The number of other innocent prisoners is likewise much
higher, especially since some other crimes (such as drug crimes)
require a much lower standard of so-called evidence than murder.

That prosecutors lie and cheat to get a conviction is more
evidence that the Amerikan Justice system is about Amerikan Just-
Us.


Court supports prosecutors buying testimony

In August, a 3 judge panel of the 10th U.$. Circuit Court of
Appeals ruled that the common practice of exchanging plea bargains
for testimony to be illegal. This ruling threw the justice system
into a panic.

But on January 8 the full 10th U.$. Circuit Court of Appeals
overturned that ruling. This January ruling is a big victory for
the government in its war against the Black, Latino and First
Nations.

When a defense attorney offers a witness money in exchange for
favorable testimony, it's called bribery and itís against the law.
But when prosecutors do it with money or something far more
valuable--freedom--it's acceptable to this system. According to a
Dallas Morning News study, 86% of federal criminal cases in the
Dallas and Forth Worth area "involved the use of informants or co-
conspirators who received deals from prosecutors in return for
testimony."

Sonya Singleton was arrested in 1998 as part of an alleged money
laundering and cocaine distribution conspiracy. Singleton's
specific charge was aiding in a wire transfer from Kansas to
California. Singleton denies the charge, but one witness at her
trial identified her as part of the conspiracy. This snitch,
Napolean Douglas, was a convicted coke dealer who cut a deal. His
prison sentence was reduced from 15 years to 5 years. Singleton
was convicted and sentenced to 4 years.

Federal bribery law prevents "'whoever' from giving, offering or
promising 'anything of value' to a witness in exchange for
testimony. The law doesn't exempt prosecutors." Referring to
Snitch Douglas, Singleton's attorney said QUOTE "With the deal he
got, he was going to tell the government anything they wanted to
hear, even if that meant lying."

The August victory for Singleton put hundreds of thousands of the
government's criminal cases at risk, and the pigs quickly
mobilized against it. Dallas u.$. attorney Paul Coggins said

"This case makes every prosecutor, every judge, every defense
attorney co-conspirators in a federal bribery case. I don't think
that can be allowed to stand."

Not taking any chances that the courts wouldn't right the
reactionary applecart, the Justice Department immediately began
lobbying Congress to exempt prosecutors from the bribery statutes.

Declaring the practice illegal, Paul J. Kelley Jr., wrote in
August:

"If justice is perverted when a criminal defendant seeks to buy
testimony from a witness, it is no less perverted when the
government does so."

The Judges said in August that if Congress wanted to exempt
prosecutors from bribery, they should change the law.

The August ruling put the U.$. Injustice System  into quite a
pickle. It got itself out by reversing the horse and the cart of
law authorship and law application. The January ruling said that

"if Congress had intended to overturn the accepted practice, 'it
would have done so in clear, unmistakable and unarguable
language.'"

Of course, that Congress could have changed the law to formally
exempt prosecutors from the law further proves RAIL's point that
the government is the real criminal conspiracy. Already the pigs
have little reason to follow their own laws, and when forced to
(as they almost were in this case) they can change the laws.


mother of drug war prisoner set up. 2:50 track 17 Voices of the
drug war CD


PBS Frontline documentary "Snitch" exposes Injustice system's use
of informants

This new PBS Frontline documentary exposes the use of informants
to get convictions. It traces the use of informants back to the
passage of laws mandating mandatory minimum prison sentences for
drug convictions. The documentary is especially effective because
it contains interviews with snitches who confess to lying in
exchange for their testimony.

According to the documentary, by the early 1990s, $100 million a
year was spent paying informants, and many thousands of snitches
have had their sentences reduced. In the last 5 years, one third
of those sentenced in federal drug cases have had their sentences
reduced for snitching.

The documentary argues that the reliance on informants corrupts
the justice system. RAIL would argue however, that the reliance on
informants is merely a sign that the system itself is corrupt. We
argue that the U.$. justice system has always been about
repressing the Blacks, Latinos and First Nations. The War on Drugs
is an escalation in that an existing imperialist war and not a
significant deviation from the norm.

Snitch explains that the passage of mandatory minimum sentences
for drugs grew out of the Democratic Party's efforts to claim the
title of "tough on crime" for upcoming (1986) elections. In 1986,
the House Speaker was Democrat Tip O'Neil of Massachusetts. The
college draft pick for the Boston Celtics was Len Bias, who died
from a cocaine overdose before he could play. With the elections
quickly approaching, and the Boston Celtics fans particularly
outraged over the effects of drugs, the Congress quickly passed
laws requiring mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses.

Because of the mandatory minimums, judges can no longer dole out
sentences they deemed "appropriate." According to one study cited
in the documentary, mandatory minimums are opposed by all defense
attorneys, half of prosecutors, and many judges. Congress passed
the laws without much research or public input, including from
Department of Justice and Corrections type pigs.

Whether policies fulfill their stated goal of "fighting crime" is
secondary to getting the simple-minded anti-crime vote and
bolstering the growing prison industry.

Crime is a real problem, but locking up more people has proven
itself to not be a solution. The war on crime has however led to
fulfillment of another Amerikkkan goal: the repression and control
of its internal Black Latino and First Nations colonies.

The only way out of a mandatory minimum sentence: Snitch.  After
helping other people go to jail, the prosecutor will then file a
motion to reduce the snitch's sentence. The imposition of the
mandatory minimums removes much judicial discretion from
sentencing. First time defendants can no longer hope to be let off
with probation. In order to avoid a long sentence of what could be
10 years or much more, they snitch.

Many of the cases profiled in the documentary are that of outright
fabrication or entrapment. As long as the prosecution can get a
conviction of somebody else, they don't care if its true or not.
In one case given prominence in the documentary, a young white
man, Joey, is badgered into selling drugs to a friend who turns
out to be an informant. Because Joey won't turn someone else in,
he gets 10 years. Joey's father spends $100,000 trying to entrap a
drug dealer in a failed effort to win the favor of the prosecutor.
Legally speaking, entrapment is supposed to be illegal because the
government doesn't want to create more crime. But with the war on
drugs, the prime motivation is locking more people up, not logic,
the law or even ending drugs.

The documentary ends on a strong note with an interview of a juror
for a defendant who refused to snitch. The juror explains that he
thought the defendant should get a short sentence, like 3-5 years.
But jurors in federal cases are not involved in sentencing. The
juror is shocked to learn that his guilty vote meant, as a result
of mandatory minimums, to 3 life sentences without hope of parole.

"He seemed to be such a promising boy", said the juror.

The documentary then ends with the text that since the enactment
of mandatory minimum sentencing laws in 1986, the supply of drugs
has not changed.

To the millions of Amerikans who saw this documentary, the
Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League must ask: Are you ready to
break with the anti-crime and embrace real solutions? Or are you
willing to crush the life out of every "promising boy" fingered by
a snitch?

This has been Under Lock and Key, a weekly Revolutionary Anti-
Imperialist League program about prisons. For more information,
contact: RAIL PO Box 712 Amherst MA 01004, or email
RAILRadio@mim.org.