Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

From the Book of Hours for Engelbert of Nassau (1470s)
By an unknown Flemish miniaturist, manuscript in the Bodleian Library.
Courtesy of Web Gallery of Art, via Wikimedia Commons.

Commentary: Mandatory Minimums for Drug Trafficking?

Disclaimer: Since I am not an expert, some of this may be inaccurate. Mistakes are likely mine and not due to the sources.

Since the Anti-Drug Abuse Act came into effect in the United States in 1986, the definition of "drug trafficking" in the courts has meandered considerably from the definition which the bill's sponsors had in mind.

This legislation requires courts to imprison everyone who is convicted of drug trafficking for minimum sentences which tend to comprise five to ten years. But prosecutors are able, according to the statute, to require these sentences even for unsystematic and non-violent crimes, and even as an alternative to treatment.

In the state of Iowa, even the possession of 5 grams of meth leads to a 5-year minimum sentence ("unless," the Governor's Office of Drug Control Policy recommends, "the defendant pleads guilty and/or cooperates with the prosecution of other defendants.").* On the federal level, crimes involving 5 g of crack cocaine or 500 g of powder cocaine roughly result in the same sentence; 50 g/5kg in the 10-year sentence.**

* Methamphetamine is an unusual case; other controlled substances, e.g. heroin and cocaine, may be met by milder sentencing where, for example, a first offense occurs. Marijuana, K2 ('synthetic cannabis'), and controlled Schedule IV medicines like diazepam are exempted from any mandatory minimum.
** "Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy," p. 5. Until the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, the simple possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine was also punished with a 5-year minimum mandatory sentence. Having even an enormous amount of any other drug except Rohypnol would lead to a year's imprisonment at most. Since there was a racist element to the sentencing (in 2006 81.8% of crack cocaine offenders were African American [p. 15]) it became an urgent issue; a sentencing disparity of 18-to-1 still exists.

"DRUG trafficking," according to a critical article on the American Civil Liberties Union's website, presently covers furnishing a methamphetamine dealer with a cold medicine (pseudoephedrine) which is used to make the drug, being a middleman, or picking up drugs for a friend. By contrast, Senator and co-sponsor Robert Byrd had wanted the law to target crime bosses and dealers higher in the hierarchy.

In a 2002 report the United States Sentencing Commission had formulated the principle:

(3) enhanced sentences generally should be imposed on a defendant who, in the course of a drug offense –
  (i) murders or causes serious bodily injury to an individual;
  (ii) uses a dangerous weapon (including a firearm);
  (iii) involves a juvenile or a woman who the defendant knows or should know to be pregnant;
  (iv) engages in a continuing criminal enterprise or commits other criminal offenses in order to facilitate the defendant's drug trafficking activities;
  (v) knows, or should know, that the defendant is involving an unusually vulnerable victim;
  (vi) restrains a victim;
  (vii) distributes cocaine within 500 feet of a school;
  (viii) obstructs justice;
  (ix) has a significant prior criminal record;
  (x) is an organizer or leader of drug trafficking activities involving five or more persons.*

*Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy, p. 7

Also,

The Subcommittee on Crime of the House Committee on the Judiciary generally defined serious traffickers as "managers of the retail traffic, the person who is filling the bags of heroin, packaging crack cocaine into vials . . . and doing so in substantial street quantities" and major traffickers as "manufacturers or the heads of organizations who are responsible for creating and delivering very large quantities."*

*Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy, p.8

MELISSA Harris-Perry of the television channel MSNBC commented during a roundtable discussion on her show on November 18th that there has been no proof, in any case, that mandatory minimum sentencing has any effect on crime rates.

It has however been proven to exacerbate imprisonment rates, correctional institutes' overcrowding (the population in federal prisons is now three times what it was in 1986, fed by the influx of drug offenders on mandatory sentences), costs, injustice in that the prosecution is felt to be disproportionate to the offense, and indirect and broader problems like broken families, cyclical criminality and poverty. The prisoner may also be forced to serve his sentence in a far harsher way than was ever intended; for instance, young prisoners are sometimes put in solitary confinement as a method of shielding them from older fellow inmates. Solitary confinement is generally increasingly used, also for suicide risks and many other problems; and one factor which arguably contributes to its popularity is overcrowding.

Illustration: Statue of Themis in the Central Statue Square, at the Legislative Council Building, in Hong Kong.
Photo by ChvhLR10, via Wikimedia Commons. (CC BY-SA 3.0) Licence.

*

Day of St. Martin

In honour of the day.

***

Lead glass window in the Catholic church Église Saint-Aignan de Chartres in Chartres. It portrays Saint Martin and was fabricated in the early 16th century (according to a leaflet in the church); the deterioration of this window and others appears to be owing partly to the siege of Chartres during the 'Wars of Religion' in 1568. The parish in which the church is situated once belonged to the counts of Blois and of Chartres. Photograph taken in January 2011, and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, by Reinhardhauke. 

(Additional information from "Église Saint-Aignan de Chartres," French Wikipedia, read November 11, 2012.)

Live Blog 2: Republican National Convention

After yesterday's hiatus in, er, reportage, here is the third and last day of the Republican National Convention from Tampa, Florida. I am watching it through C-Span's livestream.

"Baby elephant mud bathing Chobi, Botswana Photo"
by Lee R. Berger (Profberger)
via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Before we begin:
"Texas voter ID law is blocked," (August 30, 2012) Washington Post
 
THE U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decided earlier today that Texas's new voter ID laws are discriminatory against African-Americans and Hispanics of modest means. An appeal to the Supreme Court is intended.

Republican lawmakers have argued that the voter ID law is needed to clean up voter rolls, [. . .] Texas, they argue, is asking for no more identification than people need to board an airplane, get a library card or enter many government buildings.

In South Carolina, voters would need to show a driver's license, DMV identification card, U.S. military ID, passport, or a photo ID which can be obtained from election workers in one's county free of charge. In Texas, the Department of Justice has estimated that anyone without a copy of their birth certificate would have to fork over at least $22.

Live Blog: Republican National Convention, August 28, 2012

"The eye of an asian elephant at Elephant Nature Park, Thailand",
photograph by Alexander Klink (2008)
From Wikimedia Commons, Licence (CC BY 3.0)

Warning: written from a pro-Democratic viewpoint. Of course I endeavour to present facts correctly; please do not assume that I have succeeded entirely, however. Please excuse typos, non-sequiturs, and other oddities.

As the US Republican Party's convention in advance of the November elections takes place in Tampa, Florida, I am following this second day of events through the government broadcaster C-Span's livestream.

6:41 p.m. EDT  (UTC-4:00) C-Span lady says the Convention is officially in recess until 7:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.

6:43 p.m. Philosophical West African lady telephoning in from New York State: Have civilized dialogue, not violent language. Mitt Romney and Barack Obama still have to work together after the election, no matter what happens.

6:56 p.m. Smarmy besuited young male individual waving "MITT" sign behind NBC news anchor Chuck Todd during his interview. We get it already, we really do.

7:02 p.m. Pale Texan delegate who has apparently not needed to be shielded from the sun for a while wearing cowboy hat is really incongruous. And he is at least one individual on Earth's green and blue sphere who would like to see former President G.W. Bush at the convention; still says he thinks it's tactically better for him to be absent. Is this the southern passive-aggression I've heard about?

7:04 p.m. A Hispanic lady who is for Romney-Ryan has been discovered!

7:07 p.m. Earlier at the convention: Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney were determined to be the nominees, which — as many a Twitter jokester commented — is an unforeseen contingency that threatens to capsize this Republican electoral season.

Convention begins again.

Wishful Thinking About Violence Against Women

REPUBLICAN congressman Steve King of Iowa has contributed his own remarks to the fray over Missouri congressman and senatorial candidate Todd Akin's contention that 'legitimate rape' almost never results in pregnancy. (A video of Rep. Akin's comments appeared on the web on August 19th; he has apologized since then.)

In an August 20th interview with the television station KMEG 14 (a CBS affiliate in Sioux City, Iowa), Rep. King replied to a question about how pregnancy after statutory rape (e.g. consensual sex between an adult man and a twelve-year-old girl) should be treated,

Well I just haven't heard of that being a circumstance that's been brought to me in any personal way and I'd be open to hearing discussion about that subject matter.

He was speaking in the Le Mars and Sioux Center, where he was campaigning, and the video of the news segment which includes his comments is on the television station's website. His spokesperson has since responded,

Cinema, Antipodeans, and the Queen

Since it is the British monarch's Diamond Jubilee year, articles relating to Queen Elizabeth II have been turning up in unexpected places.

The presence of one such article on the website of the Daily Telegraph — given its conservative sensibilities — is not really unexpected; but this scene in it, narrated by David Poole (who has done more than one portrait of her) truly is:

On one occasion she asked, 'Have you seen the film Crocodile Dundee? You must, it's hilarious.'

("I saw it on her recommendation," the painter adds, "and agreed with her.")

"35 years of portraits of the Queen from the Royal Society of Portrait Painters" [Daily Telegraph], by David Poole et al. (April 19, 2012)

***

"RP Exhibitions & Events" [Royal Society of Portrait Painters]
With details of a May exhibition at Trafalgar Square, London, of portraits by Society members, including ones shown in the Telegraph's slideshow.

"Crocodile Dundee (trailer)" [YouTube: WhenNatureCall] (Uploaded June 2, 2008)

Further reading:

Karl to comment on Jubilee [Elle UK], by Emily Cronin (April 18, 2012)
(Karl is Lagerfeld, the designer for Fendi and Chanel, and by 'Jubilee' Elle means the anniversary celebrations on June 3rd, one day after the exact day Queen Elizabeth was crowned in 1953.)
"Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II" [Wikipedia]
An exhaustive overview of the festivities. The proposed ceremonies in the United Kingdom, flotilla and bank holiday and all, are detailed toward the bottom of the page.
"The Queen Through The Ages" [Elle UK], slideshow from various sources and with commentary by Sunil MaKan (March 30, 2012)