Monday, January 2, 2006

# Vin Suprynowicz at The Las.... # Vin Suprynowicz at The Las Vegas Review-Journal - I'm stickin' with the union - an interesting idea for freeing victims of the war on some drugs. Form a union whose members pledge to demand a jury trial. So all members of our new union need to do is this: Agree to demand a jury trial. No plea bargains -- no guilty pleas, ever. Otherwise, please don't join. Today, no individual defense attorney can in good conscience advise any individual defendant not to take the deal. But all the drug war defendants have to do is sign up and agree that -- once an arbitrary number of drug defendants estimated to be 25 percent of all those currently charged have signed on -- a "D-Day" will be announced, and all brother members will immediately demand jury trials. Furthermore, they will advise their attorneys not to stipulate or agree to any delay in a trial date, even if the prosecutor choked to death on a chicken bone last night. Union brothers will instruct their counsel to file for dismissal based on denial of a speedy trial on the 181st day, and keep filing, and publicize these filings with dramatic courthouse-step press conferences. Invite Amnesty International and the International Red Cross to participate. Mention what percentage of these defendants, being held without trial, are black or Hispanic. Mention it constantly. [End the War on Freedom] An interesting idea, but it has a glaring flaw: Which is where those sizeable union dues come into play. The families of these first victims of the predictable wave of "payback" prosecutions will be handsomely compensated out of the union "strike fund" for any hardships encountered while their loved ones are in jail ... though I doubt the extra-long sentences with which they're threatened will hold up for long. Why? Because those sentences -- and the likely contempt citations issued against any defense attorney discovered to be working with our new IBDWV -- will constitute illegal retaliation for union organizing under the National Labor Relations Act! Any judge trying to play "hardball" with our members or their counsel can be turned in to the NLRB, and such sentences appealed as "cruel and unusual" based on their own long habit of knocking down charges in exchange for plea bargains. Expecting the government to rule against itself is absurd. The NLRB would simply proclaim that the law doesn't apply to that case, and that would be the end of it. comment () trackback ()  2:35:46 PM

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