Texas Criminal Lawyer Blog

As the New Year approaches, it is time to take stock and look back at yet another year of incompetence, ineptitude and absurdity in our nation's War on Drugs. As always, many of the biggest busts were as bizarre as they were illuminating, so today I want to review some of the extraordinary federal drug cases that captured our national imagination. Herewith I offer my First Annual Five Most Outrageous Federal Drug Stories of 2010:

5. Lying Prosecutors Reach Record Numbers

As USA Today reported back in September, the number of prosecutors caught lying, cheating, and misleading juries has only continued to grow at an astonishing pace - at least 201 cases in recent years. One well-reported story focused on an inmate - Nino Lyons - who was convicted because an overwhelming number of witnesses claimed he sold them cocaine. The only problem? All of the witnesses were inmates, and many were secretly promised early release for cooperating with a group of crooked cops. One such witness who claimed to have purchased "hundreds of pounds" of cocaine from Lyons was literally unable to recognize his picture.

4. Senior Federal Judge Busted with Drugs, Stripper Mistress

Sometimes the enforcers among us are hiding the biggest secrets. Senior Federal Judge Jack Kamp was caught in a sting in early October and charged with four drug charges and one count of possessing firearms while illegally using drugs. The whole sordid story went national when it was learned that the married Kamp had been involved with a stripper, plying her with drugs, offering to protect her with a pair of guns, and following her without notice. The judge even gave her his federally-issued laptop and offered to help the young woman with a series of felony convictions.

3. Feds Raid Brassiere

Any good list needs an outlier to mix things up, and ours hails from Fairbanks, Alaska, where the canon of unusual smuggling conceits gained a new member in April. U.S. Marshals and members of the DEA were casing the parking lot of a local gas station when a couple arrived to complete an alleged meth deal on the asphalt. The man, Dale Albert Homan, was charged immediately with alleged meth and marijuana in his truck, but his partner nearly emerged unscathed. That is, until someone noticed that one cup of her brassiere appeared to be "misshapen." Sure enough, a female officer called to the scene allegedly discovered more than a gram of meth inside Elizabeth Patricia McDaniel's brassiere, leading to a second charge, and a national wire story.

2. SWAT Terrifies Family, Shoots Pets Over Small Amount of Marijuana

A shocking video of a Columbia, Missouri drug raid conducted by SWAT officers spawned national outrage this year as viewers chimed in on the horrific events of that evening. A young couple, Jonathan Whitworth and Brittany Montgomery, were at home and the woman was allegedly reading to her 7-year-old son when a SWAT team in full gear exploded into the house and fired seven shots, killing the family's pit pull and injuring their pet corgi. Despite the child's utter terror at the raid, and despite the fact that Whitworth was never charged for the small amount of marijuana in his home, the couple was charged with "child endangerment." "I've never felt so violated or more victimized in my life," Montgomery told to a reporter at Reason. Thousands of viewers across the country agreed.

1. Latest Smuggling Tunnel Has Everything But an Xbox

And lastly we come to the Outrageous Drug Story of the Year: the increasingly impressive smuggling tunnels that continue to make national news. November saw two such discoveries, each spanning the ½-mile distance between Tijuana and San Diego. Each had ventilation, electricity, and a sophisticated rail system designed to move marijuana across the border with maximum efficiency. 76 such tunnels have been discovered in the last four years, but these most recent examples may be distinguished by their staggering drug hauls - over 50 tons of cannabis in total. Investigators believe both are the handiwork of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, controlled by one Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman. The Feds are plenty encouraged by their success, of course, but the question remains: just how many tunnels remain, and which of them will take the cake in 2011?

Willie Nelson's recent arrest for marijuana possession has again spotlighted the infamous border checkpoint on Interstate 10 at Sierra Blanca, Texas, about 110 miles west of El Paso.

I represent a lot of folks who are stopped and searched at this Federal checkpoint, which is a functional equivalent of the U.S. border; that is, cops can search any vehicle they stop for drugs or other contraband with only a "reasonable suspicion" on the part of the officer that drugs may be on board.

Most of those arrested here face up to 48 hours in the Hudspeth County jail before they are brought before a Justice of the Peace and bond is set. This tiny town of 850 people has sprouted a new motel, and has a large jail adjacent to the courthouse as well as a larger detention center across the interstate which houses Federal prisoners and immigration detainees.

People arrested with small amounts of drugs or marijuana are handed over to the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office and are charged locally with felonies or misdemeanors, depending on the quantity and the substance.

Two state district courts are supported by the Sierra Blanca checkpoint, and the two J.P.courts and the County court have large dockets resulting from the flow of arrests from the checkpoint.

The attitude of the local sheriff is reflected in his interview by the El Paso Times after the famous singer's bus was searched: . "He could get 180 days in county jail, which if he does, I'm going to make him cook and clean. He can wear the stripy uniforms just like the other ones do."

There is a lot of that attitude reflected in the cops who make these arrests. I often have reports of clients who are driven from the checkpoint at high speeds by local DPS or sheriff's officers, who quickly dump their human cargo off for processing at the jail and speed back to the checkpoint for more arrests.

Most of these unfortunate folks are not criminals; they are good hard working citizens who are caught with small amounts of marijuana or drugs by a Border Patrol system which rarely stops major drug trafficking: most professionals know to avoid the checkpoints. Its the little guy who gets stopped; and occasionally, somebody famous like Willie Nelson.

I was talking to some people a few days ago who'd each been stopped for speeding on their way to our common destination- a gathering in the Davis Mountains of far west Texas. Some got tickets, some did not. But since I was the lawyer in the group, everybody wanted to tell me about their experience. As is often the case, I learned more than they did.

The Texas state trooper who'd stopped them had asked the driver where he was going. Then either he or his partner went around to the other side of the vehicle and asked the passenger in the back seat the same question. Why did they do that?, I was asked. He's looking for conflicting stories, I replied. A different answer would have led to a few more questions,the answers to which might have led to a "step out of the car, please.', and a subsequent search of the car.

Different answers, together with "nervous" behavior, might lead to a "reasonable suspicion" as the courts say, for the trooper to ask for permission to search the vehicle for drugs or other contraband. In the border country of west Texas, there is a lot of drug trafficking; this adds another item to the scale used by the courts to weigh officer's testimony in such cases.

In my experience over the years, I have learned that cops are not very creative. The courts require a "reasonable articulation" of the facts and circumstances leading up to the search of a vehicle and the arrest of its occupant. Thus, I begin to observe what I call a trend of circumstances: lately, it is conflicting stories-before that, it was masking odors, such as perfume,(a sweet smelling driver was a dirty driver!) and, my favorite, the Bible in the front seat.

What, you say? A Bible? Yes, there was short period when troopers or Drug Task Force cops argued that the presence of religious paraphernalia was a sign that narcotics paraphernalia was somewhere present. The Bible was meant to deflect the trooper's suspicion of the presence of drugs.

The courts knocked that one down, but other criteria arise out of the ashes of the last shot-down articulation, and will continue to evolve as long as there are cops who copy each other's reports just as they copied each other's papers in school.