The Bush administration is asserting executive privilege, and refusing to hand over documents related to the U.S. attorney firings. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that one fired prosecutor says he was pressured by the Justice Department to seek the death penalty in cases where he–being the one most intimately familiar with the details of the case, and therefore its merit as a capital case–didn’t think it was necessary. There have been past reports about the Bush Justice Department being particularly aggressive about seeking the death penalty in states that don’t believe in capital punishment. Another fine example of this administration’s contempt for federalism.

Agitator guest-blogger alumnus Ryan Grim also sends this report:

The eight U.S. Attorneys fired by the Gonzales justice department differed markedly from the average prosecutor in their handling of the war on drugs. On average, the eight attorneys prosecuted about a third as many small crack cocaine cases—18—as their colleagues—48—in fiscal year 2006, an analysis of federal data compiled by the U.S. Sentencing Commission shows. But the attorneys were much more vigorous than their non-fired counterparts in pursuit of large powder cocaine dealers.

The eight attorneys pressed forward with 0.5 percent of all crack cases, though they represented 10 percent of all U.S. Attorneys. Carol Lam, the attorney for Southern California, prosecuted only two crack cocaine cases. Paul Charlton of Arizona pressed four and New Mexico’s David Iglesias 23, meaning the three border state attorneys averaged just one fifth of the number of cases their colleagues pushed.

Crack cocaine cases can bog down the federal system because of their small size: the median bust is only 51 grams, more than a hundred times smaller than the median powder bust. Though the fired attorneys placed a low priority on small crack cases, the numbers indicate that they were better at snaring large powder cocaine dealers.

Lam, for instance, pressed double the average number of powder cocaine cases, at 97. And those were big busts. Compared to the median weight of all powder cases prosecuted by U.S. Attorneys—6 kilograms (kilos)—Lam’s median bust was 22 kilos. The collective group of fired U.S. Attorneys prosecuted cases with a median weight of nearly 11 kilos, almost double the national median.

Median weight means that half the cases prosecuted were heavier than that number and half were below. It’s more instructive to use median weight, because average weight could be distorted by one massive seizure of, say, a million kilos.

Federal prosecutors have finite resources. A prosecutor who overlooks small-time crack possession and street-level dealing, and concentrates resources on making bigger cases—whether they be large-scale drug cases, corruption, white-collar crime—is reflecting a more sophisticated approach to the drug war, said Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation.

“It has nothing to do with their being fired,” he speculated. “It indicates a profound failure to look at the performance of their office. If you were sitting in an office in Washington, and you wanted to evaluate a U.S. Attorney, and you recognize that the prosecution of cocaine cases is a fundamental, key mission of the US Department of Justice, given the centrality of the cocaine problem for America’s violent crime problems, then anyone who is competent in doing this evaluation would see that these districts show a much smarter and more productive approach to cocaine prosecutions.”

The Department of Justice declined to comment.

I’m obviously no fan of the drug war. But if you’re going to wage one, isn’t it smarter to save your resources for the big suppliers, instead of wasting taxpayer money on ginning up prosecution stats and crowding prisons with low-level offenders?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 12:51 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.