The New Yorker has an extensive article, The Throwaways , on the misuse of informants.

Informants are the foot soldiers in the government’s war on drugs. By some estimates, up to eighty per cent of all drug cases in America involve them, often in active roles like Hoffman’s. For police departments facing budget woes, untrained C.I.s provide an inexpensive way to outsource the work of undercover officers. “The system makes it cheap and easy to use informants, as opposed to other, less risky but more cumbersome approaches,” says Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a leading expert on informants. “There are fewer procedures in place and fewer institutional checks on their use.” Often, deploying informants involves no paperwork and no institutional oversight, let alone lawyers, judges, or public scrutiny; their use is necessarily shrouded in secrecy.

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R.I.P., Richard Flor, a 68 year old medical marijuana dispensary owner who has died in federal prison. The story will make you sick.

US District Court Judge Charles Lovell sentenced Flor to to 5 years in federal prison despite testimony that he was suffering from a variety of illnesses, including dementia, diabetes, hepatitis C, and osteoporosis. Lovell did recommend that Flor "be designated for incarceration at a federal medical center" where his "numerous physical and mental diseases and conditions can be evaluated and treated."

Months after beginning his sentence, he still hadn't been transferred to a medical facility. His lawyer described his condition in a brief:

On multiple occasions while in custody, Flor had fallen out of bed breaking his ribs, his clavicle and his cervical bones as well as injuring vertebrae in his spine. Flor also suffered from dementia, diabetes and kidney failure among other ailments,.

Here's what the Judge had to say: [More..]

The militarization of the war on drugs is officially underway.

A team of 200 U.S. Marines began patrolling Guatemala's western coast this week in an unprecedented operation to beat drug traffickers in the Central America region, a U.S. military spokesman said Wednesday.

The Marines are deployed as part of Operation Martillo, a broader effort started last Jan. 15 to stop drug trafficking along the Central American coast. Focused exclusively on drug dealers in airplanes or boats, the U.S.-led operation involves troops or law enforcement agents from Belize, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Honduras, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama and Spain.

Wired has more here.

The New York Times reports the Drug Enforcement Administration will be expanding operations in West Africa, in continued efforts to stop cocaine from going from South America to Africa to Europe.

“We see Africa as the new frontier in terms of counterterrorism and counternarcotics issues,” said Jeffrey P. Breeden, the chief of the D.E.A.’s Europe, Asia and Africa section. “It’s a place that we need to get ahead of — we’re already behind the curve in some ways, and we need to catch up.”

In 2009, the U.S. drug war budget for Africa was $7.5 million. For 2010 and 2011, it was $50 million. Now, for 2013, it seems to be at least $60 million.

At the State Department, Asst. Secy. William Brownfield has been pushing hard for support for the DEA's African adventures, including new initiatives like the five year West African Citizen Security Initiative (WACSI). There's also the West Africa Coast Initiative (WACI). [More...]

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has released its annual report on the use of federal and state wiretaps and electronic surveillance. The summary is here, and the page with all the appendixes and charts is here. Some highlights:

• 85% of the federal wiretaps were in drug cases.
• The average cost for a federal wiretap was $71,748, a 13 percent increase from 2010.
• Telephone wiretaps accounted for 96 percent (2,092 cases) of the intercepts installed in 2011, the majority of them involving cellular telephones.
• During 2011, a total of 4,006 arrests, 2,700 convictions, and additional costs of $51,874,823 arose from and were reported for wiretaps completed in previous years.

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Congressman Jared Polis grills DEA Chief Michele Leonhart on the dangers of heroin and meth as compared to marijuana. Great job by Polis. Not so great job by Leonhart who couldn't answer the simple question of whether methamphetamine or heroin is worse for your health than marijuana.

The hearing was held yesterday by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security and the subject was Oversight of the DEA. Here is Leonhart's prepared testimony. [More...]

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced a legislative proposal that would make marijuana possession in public a violation punishable by a fine, and enforced via a summons in lieu of arrest. That's the current law in New York for personal possession of small amounts of marijuana (up to an ounce) not in public view.

Smoking marijuana in public would remain a misdemeanor. But Cuomo endorsed the police department's use of stop and frisk.

“Stop-and-frisk is a well-accepted police strategy all across the country,” the governor said in announcing his legislative proposal yesterday.

Mayor Bloomberg is supporting Cuomo's bill. Why go halfway? Neither public nor private possession of marijuana should be a violation or a crime. [More...]

Judicial Business of the U.S. Courts publishes the most detailed statistical tables on the work of the federal Judiciary. This week it released its statistical analysis for the 12 month period ending September 30, 2011. A summary is here, and the full report, with tables, is here.

The summary and news accounts of the report skip some of the report's most interesting statistics on criminal cases. The chart that leapt out at me is how bail has become the exception in federal courts while pre-trial detention has become the rule. First the punishment, then the verdict.

Where's the worst place to be charged with a crime? The district most likely to deny you bail, keep you locked up for months or years awaiting trial, in either federal detention centers or dismal county jails not meant to house long-term prisoners, where you are unable to work and provide for your family, have no access to meaningful rehabilitative programs and have only limited access to your lawyer in cramped visiting rooms to prepare your defense. [More...]

At the meeting of the UN Commmission on Narcotic Drugs that opened today in Vienna, Bolivian President Evo Morales held up a coca leaf and defended -- to applause -- the right of Bolivians to grow and chew the plant:

Morales said that chewing coca leaves was an "ancestral right" for Bolivians. "We are not drug addicts when we consume the coca leaf. The coca leaf is not cocaine, we have to get rid of this misconception," he said in a speech that ended with applause from the hall.

"This is a millennia-old tradition in Bolivia and we would hope that you will understand that coca leaf producers are not drug dealers."

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Vice President Joe Biden in Mexico today on U.S. drug policy:

There is no possibility that the Obama-Biden administration will change its policy on legalization."

Biden said the Obama Administration will ask for more funding for Central America's drug war in addition to the $361 million we've given so far:

Biden said the U.S. has provided about $361 million in anti-crime aid under the Central America Regional Security Initiative, but leaders in the region called that insufficient. Biden said the administration is asking more from congress.

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FBI Director Robert Mueller delivered this speech yesterday at the RSA conference in San Francisco. Highlights:

Cyberattacks will replace terrorism as America's number one threat

Terrorism remains the FBI’s top priority. But in the not too distant future, we anticipate that the cyber threat will pose the number one threat to our country.

Stings and more electronic surveillance are coming, including on social networks and wireless technologies: [More...]

The Colorado Secretary of State confirmed today that the initiative to legalize adult personal possession and use of marijuana has obtained enough signatures to be on the November ballot.

The measure would legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for people 21 years and older. It would also allow for people to grow up to six marijuana plants in their home. Special stores would be allowed to sell marijuana, but communities would also have the option of banning those businesses.

More here. The taxed proceeds will go to benefit education.

The full text of the initiative is here.