Well, well, well.
In my little ole corner of the world, it has been recently revealed that if you are charged with some sort of drug crime, you can pay money (thousands of dollars) into a fund for new police toys and get a reduced charge:
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/apps...WS09/606100337
Some examples:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:CASES REVIEWED
Among the Whatcom County Superior Court cases reviewed by the AP:
• Aleksandar Stanimirovic, 34, of Vancouver, Wash., was stopped entering the U.S. from British Columbia in a semi trailer on July 28, 2005. Hidden in the truck's ceiling was 146 pounds of marijuana, worth at least $200,000, according to court documents. Prosecutors originally charged him with a class B felony. He agreed to pay $5,000 to the drug fund, and the charge was dropped to a class C felony. He was sentenced to one month on work release, one month of community service and $2,000 in other fines and court fees.
• Erin E. McKenna of San Francisco was paid $2,500 to drive a Ford pickup to British Columbia and back in June 1998. She knew she was transporting contraband, said her lawyer, Michael Tasker. As she returned to the U.S., border guards found a false gas tank in the truck containing 15 pounds of marijuana and $28,000. She was charged with felony possession with intent to deliver, but after she agreed to make a $9,750 "contribution" to the drug fund, it was reduced to a gross misdemeanor, court records show. She was given a three-month sentence: two months suspended, one month community service.
• Constance Arlene Powers, 59, of Mount Vernon was stopped at the border with 4 pounds of marijuana in her car on May 22, 2003. She was charged with felony possession but claimed the marijuana belonged to a young relative who had access to her vehicle. For a $2,500 payment to the drug fund, prosecutors reduced the charge to the lesser felony of second-degree malicious mischief, which had no logical connection to her offense, said her lawyer, Thomas Fryer. She pleaded guilty, signing a statement that said she "did knowingly and maliciously cause physical damage to the property of another," and was sentenced to 25 days of community service, a $1,000 fine for violating the Uniform Controlled Substances Act - though that's not what she pleaded to - and $710 in court costs.
• Cameron James Stewart, 30, of Vancouver, B.C., admitted smuggling for profit after he was arrested at the border in 2003 with 10 pounds of marijuana hidden in a tire - but said he thought he was smuggling Cuban cigars. He agreed to pay $3,000 to the drug fund, and his felony charge of possession with intent to deliver was dropped to misdemeanor possession. He was sentenced to two days, which he had already served.
• Tami Dale Marshall faced two felony counts - possession with intent to deliver, and possession of more than 40 grams - last year after she was caught at the border with 15 pounds of marijuana. When she agreed to give $3,000 to the drug fund, the first charge was dropped. The sentence: two months of work release and $2,000 in other fines and fees.
• Shane Cousineau, 36, of Bellingham was charged with four counts of unlawful possession of a firearm, manufacture of marijuana and possession of oxycodone when detectives found guns, three marijuana plants, 32 grams of marijuana and two Percocet pills in his room. Cousineau, who previously had been convicted of one felony and eight misdemeanors, agreed last December to pay $4,000 to the drug fund. All charges were dropped except the felony charge of manufacturing marijuana; he was sentenced to one month on a work crew, one month of community service and $2,000 in other fines and fees.
• Vance Miguel Tarrida, 26, a Canadian resident, was arrested entering the U.S. at the Lynden border crossing on Jan. 29, 2005. Prosecutors said investigators found 3 pounds of marijuana in his bags and clothing. He agreed to pay $2,500 to the drug fund, and his felony charge of possession with intent to deliver was reduced to the gross misdemeanor of soliciting the delivery of marijuana. He was given a yearlong suspended sentence and fined an additional $1,000.
The main story (long) :
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Drug suspects pay for leniency
County's 30-year practice under scrutiny
GENE JOHNSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Neither Joshua Sutton nor Joseph Hubbard had any criminal history when they bought $15,000 worth of marijuana from an undercover detective in Whatcom County last year. Both were arrested and charged with unlawful possession with intent to deliver, a felony.
But then their cases diverged dramatically, thanks to a practice that has been routine for nearly three decades in this border county, where federal agents dump reams of drug cases on local officials every year.
Sutton, who put up most or all of the money for the drug buy, paid $9,040 to a fund administered by the Whatcom County prosecutor. He was allowed to plead guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge, received a suspended sentence and went on his way. His payment was nearly double the maximum fine for the misdemeanor.
Hubbard, a construction worker, pleaded guilty as charged and was sentenced to 45 days on a work crew. The felony on his record means he loses the right to vote, and it could affect his ability to land a job for the rest of his life.
Their cases illustrate the inequality of an unusual system in which defendants with quick access to $2,000 or more can often "buy down" the charges against them, many legal experts say. In some cases reviewed by the AP, people caught with several pounds of marijuana pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges after paying thousands of dollars to the county's fund. In another, a young man caught with less than 2 ounces pleaded guilty to a felony after he failed to pay.
"Yikes, it sounds like the sale of indulgences in the old Catholic church," said Janet Ainsworth, a criminal law professor at Seattle University. "If you were to have a continuum between paying a fine and bribery, this is somewhere in between."
The money, which must be paid up front, is directed to the county's drug enforcement fund. It's disbursed by Prosecutor Dave McEachran with court approval, and is used to buy new equipment for the county's drug task force, to help pay the salaries of certain sheriff's officers, for drug investigations and for drug court. In the past three years, defendants have paid the fund $432,000, McEachran said. McEachran's 10 criminal deputy prosecutors handle about 500 drug cases a year.
The county keeps all money paid into the drug fund - unlike regular fines, which must be split with the state.
Steven Mura, the presiding judge of Whatcom County Superior Court, said his calendar is often so swamped that he gives only a cursory glance to plea agreements before signing them. He said he would be interested if a lawyer were to challenge drug-fund payments as part of plea deals.
"It can appear to be the purchase of a lesser charge," Mura said.
Several lawyers began questioning the practice this spring, after news stories detailed a similar but distinct practice in the central Washington city of Kennewick, where defendants in misdemeanor cases saw their charges dismissed or reduced in exchange for contributions to charities selected by the prosecutor. There, $18,000 in charity contributions vanished.
There are no allegations of missing money in Whatcom County. In interviews with the AP, McEachran defended the practice, which he inaugurated in the late 1970s, as ethically sound. The payments, he argued, should be considered a fine, part of the penalty for the offense - just like restitution in embezzlement cases. In such cases, defendants often get less jail time if they can repay the victims.
But several lawyers, law professors and other prosecutors drew a distinction. This isn't restitution, they said, and it's not a penalty prescribed by law: It's a payment to avoid punishment.
"Plea bargaining isn't always pretty, but this just seems to make a mockery of it," said Helen Anderson, who teaches criminal law at the University of Washington law school.
"You kind of wonder, 'Gee, is this quite right?'" said Bellingham defense attorney Thomas Fryer. "But if you're looking at it as the best possible arrangement for your client, you're not going to just take a stand. If that means a drug-fund contribution, so be it."
McEachran insists his prosecutors strive to be fair, and disputes the notion that the system favors those most able to pay: "We just don't see that."
McEachran said his office entered into a deal with Sutton because it had less evidence against him: Though Sutton drove by repeatedly and was in cell phone contact as Hubbard bought the 7 pounds of marijuana, Sutton never touched the drugs. Hubbard was caught red-handed, so he wouldn't have been offered a deal, McEachran said.
The AP found several cases in which people caught with more marijuana than Hubbard made drug-fund payments in exchange for reduced charges. Hubbard's lawyer, Andrew Subin of Bellingham, suggested the only reason his client didn't get a deal was because he's poor. He drives a $500 truck and often works seven days a week to support his girlfriend's disabled child, Subin said.
When Sutton's charge was reduced to a gross misdemeanor, Subin asked the deputy prosecutor, Craig Chambers, "Where's my deal?" Chambers directed an interview request to McEachran, but according to Subin, his response was: "When your guy has $10,000, then we can talk."
"Who's the big player, and who walks away from this getting screwed?" said Subin. He also wondered: If the case against Sutton was so weak, why did it cost him nearly $10,000 to have the charge reduced?
Sutton's lawyer, Jeff Steinborn of Seattle, supports Whatcom County's practice.
"Anything that mitigates the harshness of this insane drug law is a good thing," he said.
Another of Subin's clients, 22-year-old community college student Jesse Gilsoul, pleaded guilty to felony marijuana possession last month for having less than 2 ounces of marijuana. Prosecutors offered him the chance to pay $2,000 to have the charge reduced to a misdemeanor, according to both sides.
Gilsoul, who lost one of his two restaurant jobs following his arrest in December, said he did not have the money. He was sentenced to a month of community service and $1,800 in fines and court costs, to be paid as he is able. He fears the felony, his first offense, will jeopardize his financial aid.
"I wish I did have that rich uncle," Gilsoul said. "Obviously, if I was making a profit off drugs, I could come up with a couple grand real easily."
McEachran had little sympathy, noting that Gilsoul failed a lie-detector test when he said he did not intend to sell the marijuana. But the test was administered after Gilsoul failed to pay the drug fund. If he had come up with the money, the issue of his honesty would never have arisen.
Subin acknowledged that defendants don't necessarily have to pay to have charges reduced - it just helps.
Jon Ostlund, the Whatcom County public defender, said he could think of two cases where charges were reduced because the defendant agreed to perform 240 hours of community service before sentencing. Prompted partly by the AP's reporting, his office held a meeting about the practice recently; staff members said they would like to see more cases in which alternatives to the drug fund payment are accepted.
"If there's a policy that rich people can buy their way out of a case, I don't have the impression that's what's happening here," Ostlund said. But, he added, "I'm sure there are cases where we weren't able to work out something, and maybe they would have been able to if they had more money."
Irwin Schwartz, chairman of the American Bar Association's criminal standards committee, declined to comment on Whatcom County's practice, but said he hopes to form a task force to examine "best practices" for handling drug courts, deferred prosecutions and nonprosecution agreements.
A spokeswoman at the National District Attorneys Association said she had not heard of the practice being used in other states. Pam Loginsky, a spokeswoman with the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said she had never heard of a county in Washington state negotiating drug fund payments as part of plea deals.
The prosecutor's offices in King, Snohomish, Pierce and Spokane counties all said money is not on the table when they negotiate plea deals.
"We do reduce a lot of felony drug charges to misdemeanor charges, but it's not based on whether you can pay a $1,000 fine," said Joan Cavagnaro, chief criminal deputy prosecutor in Snohomish County. "It's based on the strength of the case."
John Strait, a legal ethics expert at Seattle University Law, said four lawyers have contacted him recently with questions about Whatcom County's practice. He noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down systems where defendants can choose paying a fine or doing time, because it often means jail for those who can't afford to pay.
There's also a potential conflict of interest, he said, because McEachran's office is making charging decisions based in part on the money it can obtain for a fund he administers.
"We should be punishing people for what they've done, rather than by who's going to give us money," Strait said.
The local Prosecutor, who started this back in 1979, contends that 'justice isn't for sale':
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/apps...0339/1001/NEWS
It seems rather obvious that it is, though.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Justice isn't for sale, local prosecutor says
JOHN STARK
THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
Whatcom County Prosecuting Attorney Dave McEachran says it is "just absurd" to suggest that drug defendants can get better plea bargains if they have money to pay into the county's drug fund.
He also offered no apologies for his office's creation of the fund, which he said brings in about $143,000 a year from people convicted of drug-related crimes.
"Every dollar that's paid into the drug fund is one less dollar that taxpayers have to pay," McEachran said.
McEachran was responding to an Associated Press story suggesting that Whatcom County drug defendants may be able to negotiate better plea bargain terms if they have enough money to contribute to the county's drug fund.
Is justice for sale in Whatcom County?
"I can tell you categorically that it's not," McEachran said.
The drug-fund money is used to pay a variety of law-enforcement expenses related to Whatcom County's large number of drug defendants, resulting from the county's location on the Canadian border along the Interstate 5 corridor between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C.
McEachran has been prosecutor since 1975. The elected position now pays him $124,128 a year. He set up the fund in 1979, following provisions in state law. He noted that those convicted of criminal offenses also face a variety of state legal fees that have been imposed to make them pay as much as they can to support the system that must deal with them.
Criminal fines and drug fund payments are frequently imposed as part of a plea bargain, in which a drug defendant enters a guilty plea in return for a reduced offense or sentence, McEachran said. Plea bargains are tailored to the individual circumstances of each defendant, he added.
If the Prosecutor's Office faces two drug defendants in similar cases, one with money and one penniless, who will come out better?
"We're going to try to make sure that we punish both those people," McEachran said.
Plea bargains negotiated among defendants, defense lawyers and prosecutors must be approved by Superior Court judges, McEachran added.
Two of the county's three judges acknowledged they have little time to review the plea deals.
"When we're doing 40 cases in a half day, we don't really have time to inquire," Judge Charles Snyder said.
Judge Steve Mura agreed, saying he has dealt with as many as 120 criminal cases in a single day.
"It's a zoo," he said. "It moves so fast and furious, we've got about 2½ minutes to take a plea and impose a sentence."
Mura also said no defense attorney has ever complained to him about the unfairness of the system, and he has never been asked to rule on the propriety of any relationship between plea bargains and drug-fund payments here.
But he also said that prosecuting attorneys have sometimes seemed more interested in collecting drug-fund payments than in collecting regular fines for drug offenses. The county keeps all the drug-fund payments, but splits fine money 50-50 with the state.
Mura said he occasionally has rejected plea deals in which a drug defendant's entire financial penalty is paid to the drug fund, and has insisted that the state get its share to help pay the state's own criminal-justice costs. He also said he has told prosecutors he wants to see an itemized breakdown of financial penalties imposed in drug cases, to make sure the state is getting its share.
He also observed that under a state sentencing system in place for close to 20 years, judges have very little discretion in deciding how much of a sentence to impose upon conviction. The prosecutor has more influence on the amount of fine and prison time, because the prosecutor has discretion on what offenses to charge, Mura said.
"If you want the honest truth, all we are is scriveners," Mura said. "We sign paperwork."
Judge Ira Uhrig was not immediately available for comment Friday.
Two local defense attorneys had differing perspectives on how the system works here.
Jeff Lustick said he thought the drug fund was a reasonable response to the heavy load of drug cases here. He doesn't believe the drug fund lets wealthier defendants off the hook.
Lustick said he and other attorneys often make offers of drug fund contributions as one part of a plea deal.
"I've had times when it's been rejected and the prosecutor says no," Lustick said.
Prosecutors have valid reasons for accepting plea bargains that may seem lenient. Many cases involve small amounts of drugs, defendants with clean records or evidence that is less than airtight, Lustick said. A drug fund payment is a likely part of a plea deal for a defendant who can afford it, but cash-strapped defendants can make other deals if circumstances are right.
"I've had people who didn't have a lot of cash, and I have always, underline always, been able to work it out with prosecutors," he said. "It's not like the Whatcom County prosecutor is demanding money from people who don't have it. ... It takes a little longer and sometimes you have to do a little bit of extra negotiating ... but the drug fund thing does not come down as an ultimatum. ... There are almost always ways to work around the drug fund requirement."
Attorney Starck Follis observed that the legal system always works best for those with money.
"The people who can afford an adequate defense and expert witnesses and so forth have better access to all of the justice system," he said.
Follis said every plea bargain is developed after prosecutors weigh many factors - the nature of a case, the defendant's track record, and the quality of the state's evidence, among others. But he acknowledged that ability to pay into the drug fund can also be a factor.
If the Prosecutor's Office faces two drug defendants in similar cases, one with money and one penniless, who will come out better? Follis' answer to that question was different from McEachran's.
"The person with the money does have the opportunity to purchase himself some leniency in one sense or another," Follis said. "That does happen and that's unfortunate."
In some cases, Follis said, a defendant gets several months continuance to raise enough money to offer as part of a plea deal.
But he also said that prosecutors try to be consistent from case to case, and defense attorneys are quick to complain to prosecutors about cases in which today's defendant seems to be getting tougher treatment than a defendant in a similar case yesterday.
And the forced payment of thousands of dollars into the county drug fund is not a punishment to sneeze at.
"It's a bite out of a defendant's apple," he said.
The Prosecutor's chances of continuing employment are dropping, I'd say.
Crazed Rabbit
