CADCA Survey Reveals That Congressional Candidates Support Different Drug Strategy Than Presidential Candidates

Congressional and Senate Candidates Focus on Prevention Over Interdiction and Law Enforcement

WASHINGTON, DC (October 23, 1996) -- CADCA released telling results of a survey -- more than 1,000 candidates for House and Senate seats were polled -- that revealed a majority (65 percent) ranked prevention programs higher than domestic supply reduction, interdiction or law enforcement in solving our nation's drug crisis. Recent national attention, including the rhetoric of the Presidential candidates, has focused on interdiction not prevention. Taking action as a result of the survey results, CADCA has created a 1996 Voter's Guide which will be distributed to its 4,000 members this week.

"The candidates overwhelming supported prevention above treatment, interdiction and law enforcement as the most effective means of dealing with our current drug crisis," said James E. Copple, President and CEO of CADCA the largest anti-drug coalition in the US. "The message, however, has been lost in the current Presidential Campaign and lost in the Congressional budget debates on this vital and controversial issue. What had been perceived as "pork" in the debates about the Crime Bill is now being supported as a viable strategy. This is a major shift in thinking."

Among the survey's other findings:

In a Gallup Poll released in December of 1995, Americans placed prevention and education as the most cost-effective means of reducing substance abuse. The release of Household Survey data by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in late August caught most policy makers by surprise. That data pointed to an alarming 78 percent increase in the use of drugs amongst youth in the past four years. Following the release of this data, former Senator Bob Dole attacked President Clinton for being AWOL on the drug issue and President Clinton responded with law enforcement-style strategies such as drug testing to all teens as a condition of getting a driver's license.

"Ironically, neither campaign bothered to look at the facts, nor did they look at what American people believed to be the real solution," said Copple. "Interdiction and law enforcement efforts and approaches to seal off our borders from the flow of drugs into this country have done little or nothing about the price of drugs on the streets. The street price for cocaine, heroine and marijuana have remained the same for the past ten years. Unfortunately, interdiction approaches have had little or no impact on supply."

CADCA, a nonpartisan, privately funded non-profit organization of 4,000 community-based anti-drug coalitions conducted a survey of Congressional candidates for the purpose of issuing a voter guide. The survey, which is part of a larger campaign by CADCA to raise awareness among national leaders, policy makers and the voting public about the drug issue, revealed that an overwhelming 97 percent of the candidates responding would be willing to get involved personally in their own district.

Congressman Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who has been working with CADCA since August of 1995, has created an anti-drug coalition in the 2nd Congressional District of Ohio. This Congressional Coalition is structured to bring together key influentials in the community with grassroots leaders to construct a broad-based plan with programs and strategies for reducing drug abuse. Rep. Portman has also worked with CADCA to conduct a day-long coalition building training session for close to 40 Republican Congressional staff members. Both the House of Republican Conference and the Democratic Caucus have passed unanimous resolutions endorsing anti-drug coalitions as an effective strategy in combating illegal drugs in their communities.

"Since the release of the Household Survey, approximately 100,000+ kids have experimented with drugs for the first time and another 2,000 have died as a result of their use and/or addiction," said Copple. "We cannot afford to trivialize this debate any longer. Discussions or debates about what aide to what candidates used drugs in the sixties is counter productive. America's youth are smarter than that and they deserve substantive responses to their concerns."

The 1996 Voter's Guide is being distributed to CADCA's network of more than 4,000 community-based coalitions this week. The guide will provide local coalitions with a tool to work with their local policy makers leading up to the November election and beyond.

Founded in 1992, CADCA currently represents more than 4,000 coalitions members in the US including grassroots coalitions, educators, law enforcement, drug demand reduction coordinators and many others fighting substance abuse and drug-related violence. CADCA's mission is to promote and facilitate comprehensive responses to the nation's problems of drugs and drug-related violence.

Jim Copple is available for interviews.

Date: 10/23/1996

Con:

Not quite ready for jury nullification

Recent letters to The Mountain-Ear reflect a great deal of misinformation about the Laura Kriho case and the American jury system in general. Having served as both a prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney, I'd like to offer the following comments.

First, Ms. Kriho is not being punished for "voting her conscience." This is not a case in which a lone juror held out because she believed the prosecution had failed to meet its burden of proof; this is a case in which a juror who disapproved of certain drug laws lied about her past and her willingness to follow the law in order to serve on a jury and then disobeyed the judge by urging other jurors to disregard the law.

Second, nobody is denying Ms. Kriho a jury trial because of what she did. Though I personally disagree, the Supreme Court has held that a person facing six months or less in jail has no constitutional right to a trial by jury. Ms. Kriho is not being treated any differently than anyone else cited for such an offense.

Third, contrary to what one reader suggested, Gilpin County Judge Fred Rodgers did not publish an article on how to prosecute obstructionist jurors. Judge Rodgers' article in the summer issue of The Judges' Journal was submitted to that magazine as a result of the acquittal of O.J. Simpson and long before the Kriho incident arose. The article, which I found to be both scholarly and balanced, alerted judges across the nation to the First Amendment issues which may arise when groups such as the so-called Fully Informed Jury Association appear at courthouses and attempt to make contact with jurors who have sworn to follow the law.

I have mixed feelings about jury nullification. When representing criminal defendants, there were times when I hoped jurors would disregard laws I considered to be draconian or archaic. On the other hand, followed to its logical conclusion, giving jurors the right to disregard the law ultimately does away with the rule of law altogether.

Readers considering this issue should remember that jury nullification can work both ways. Consider the case of Oklahoma City bombing suspects Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Suppose several closet supporters of the militia movement wormed their way onto the jury by lying about their beliefs and their willingness to follow the law. Even if the evidence of guilt was overwhelming, the doctrine of jury nullification would allow those jurors to acquit merely because they didn't like the way some federal agencies handled the situation at Waco. After all, they would just be "voting their conscience."

Though I disagree with some of our laws, I'm not quite ready to accept jury nullification.

Mark S. Cohen
Nederland

Pro:

To: The Editor, the Mountain-Ear via email: mtn-ear@indra.com

From: Paul Grant

Re: Laura Kriho Case

In response to Mark Cohen's letter (10/17/96), I must offer some corrections to his attempts to straighten out some facts about Laura Kriho's case. As Laura's attorney, I am closer to the facts, and I wonder where Mr. Cohen got his supposed facts.

1. Mr. Cohen is entitled to his opinion as to why Laura Kriho has been prosecuted. The facts are, however, that what she did in the jury room was thoroughly evaluate the prosecutor's evidence - and she found it insufficient to convict on one two counts, sufficient for conviction on a third count. She also informed the other jurors that jurors have rights. After the trial, outside the courthouse, she even provided a brochure dealing with jury rights, to another juror.

That's what provoked the judge to ask for an investigation and prosecution of Laura Kriho - her discussion of juror rights - if the evidence presented at trial - by other jurors - is to be believed.

Mr. Cohen says Laura lied during jury selection. That is not true, it's just a libelous statement he repeats. There was no evidence offered at trial that any statement made by Laura was false. Those accusations against her were not supported by any evidence.

2. Concerning the fact Laura was not allowed a jury trial: at first she was given one, then the prosecutor realizing he couldn't win with a jury, decided to limit the punishment he would seek to "no more than 6 months" so he could eliminate the jury. Legal? Yes. Ethical - No.

3. Mr. Cohen didn't read the Judge Rodgers' article (The Judge's Journal, Summer 1996) very well, if he thinks it was written long before Laura Kriho's case. His article includes facts about Laura's case - incorrect facts, by the way - and does recommend prosecuting "obstructionist jurors." Why Mr. Cohen denies what is written in black and white, I won't presume to guess.

What is peculiar about Judge Rodgers' article - and perhaps the Judge will explain this publicly - is, how could the judge submit this article before Laura Kriho was even charged, as he apparently did, yet include facts about her case? Where did he get his information? And why was he writing about a pending case?

Mr. Cohen describes Judge Rodgers' article as scholarly and balanced. That's strange, since anyone who knows the subject matter addressed in the article - jury nullification and the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA)- would have to find Judge Rodgers' article full of misinformation, hostility and open bias.

Judge Rodgers tries to taint jury nullification as having racist roots, and he gave short shrift to the history of jury nullification, overlooking that heroic juries were instrumental in establishing freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, resistance to slavery, rejection of Prohibition, and many other noble achievements. America's Founding Fathers benefited from juries refusing to convict under what they considered unjust British laws.

And those jurors who resisted government oppression were not prosecuted, not after the jurors who acquitted William Penn in 1670 were fined, imprisoned, and later freed, establishing that jurors can't be punished for ignoring the judge's instructions or the law.

What Mr. Cohen really does not understand about juries and the law, is that both emanate from "the people." Whatever law we have in this country, originates with the people. The jury is the voice of the people in the courtroom. We won't allow (in theory, but the Supreme Court finds ways around the theory) anyone to be deprived of life or liberty, without a fair and public trial, and a conviction, by a jury of one's peers. If the jury considers application of the law unjust, it is their right and their duty to acquit.

Judges don't make law, even legislatures don't make law - they just think they do. Legislatures propose law, judges interpret their proposals - the people decide what is the law, by what laws they are willing to abide by, and what laws they are willing to enforce.

Society readily accepts traditional laws against violence, and juries will gladly convict dangerous criminals, to keep them off the streets. Many other laws are not so universally accepted, and fair cross-sectional juries refusing to convict will send that message back to the legislatures, so the laws can be modified. Without the fair, cross-sectional jury, that message never gets back to the legislatures, and injustices are perpetrated in the courts.

Mr. Cohen is afraid of this jury power. As with any freedom, there are risks. But his alternative is to allow judges to purge juries of anyone willing to question the law, of anyone willing to ignore the judge if necessary to do justice. And he supports prosecuting those jurors who do exercise their prerogative (recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court many times) to ignore the judge's instructions.

Mr. Cohen is not quite ready to accept jury nullification - a right established in 1670, and a right important in the founding of this country, and in establishing free speech and a free press, and in ending slavery. Whether he is ready or not, jury nullification exists, it is a right, and the more judges and prosecutors attempt to suppress it, the more attention they bring to it.

We have a glorious tradition of resisting oppression in this country. Sometimes we are just a little slow to recognize oppression, we are slow to anger. Perhaps that is why it took so long to end slavery. Prosecuting courageous jurors like Laura Kriho may help us wake up to the fact that our legal system has become terribly oppressive. In the last 100 years, the legal system itself has been responsible for taking away many of our freedoms, and hiding others. Jury nullification is a right, and a freedom, which we are now rediscovering.

We have too many laws in this country, too little freedom. Jury power can show us which laws are not widely accepted, so that we can weed them out. A system of laws which is supported by the people's willingness to enforce them, will garner a lot more respect than the special interest-favoring legal system we have today. Jury nullification is a wonderful idea, whose time has come again.

Paul Grant

Dennis Peron On Cover of People Magazine

Friends-

A known U.S. informant, Rubalcava reportedly was gathering information for an indictment against Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Juarez drug lord, known for his viciousness and shrewdness. Rubalcava's two grown sons were unfortunate enough to be helping their father in this investigation.

"It was a hideous message," said Carlos Diaz de Leon, El Paso's representative for the Mexican Attorney General's office. "But he was very useful to U.S. officials, thus the giftwrap."

Rubalcava and his two sons were victims of the escalating violence linked directly to drug trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border. Authorities on both sides expect more of the same, and not just along the Texas portion of the 1,800 mile border.

In Tijuana, barely more than a 20-minute drive from downtown San Diego, the Felix-Arellano cartel is locked in a head-on an confrontation with Mexican authorities. Increasingly bold and ruthless, the Arellano operation is believed responsible for the recent assassinations of two Mexican government prosecutors assigned to Tijuana specifically to break its drug trafficking network.

The conviction last week of former drug kingpin Juan Garcia-Abrego, who until early this year headed the Gulf cartel, will have no impact on future Mexican drug shipments. By all accounts, Abrego was not a powerful trafficker by the time of his arrest. His lieutenants already have joined ranks with Amado Carrillo Fuentes of the Juarez cartel, who is rapidly moving into that territory.

The Juarez cartel has become Mexico's most powerful drug trafficking group. Carrillo Fuentes has always held an important position in the Mexican Federation, the loosely organized group that represents all Mexican traffickers. He had the best contacts with the Colombian drug cartels and had always served as deal maker among the trafficking families. He also crafted a delicate web of corruption that protects him to this date.

In a three-month investigation of recent violence in Juarez and adjoining border cities, it has become evident that Carrillo Fuentes is in a massive power takeover which has left behind a trail of bodies as he has changed the rules of the game. Last year, for instance, he took advantage of legal problems faced by Colombian drug cartels at home and murdered a top Colombian trafficker. The killing sent a chilling message that he was determined to put an end to Colombian control of the Mexico drug business.

Subsequently, Carrillo Fuentes has reinforced his direct contacts with cocaine producers in Peru and Bolivia, and has his eyes set on becoming the top trafficker in the hemisphere - the Pablo Escobar of Mexico. If Carrillo Fuentes continues unchecked, it portends more violence for the entire U.S.-Mexico border and serious repercussions for the border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

His rise has caught many U.S. officials by surprise, as U.S. anti drug efforts are still directed in a state-by-state manner, and not necessarily in a smoothly coordinated way.

Carrillo Fuentes has seriously damaged U.S. anti-drug efforts in the Texas area by targeting U.S. informants of the caliber of Rubalcava, which take years to cultivate. And he's apparently behind attacks against U.S. personnel and their relatives, which he has shrewdly masked as common crimes to avoid retaliation from U.S. authorities.

One such attack was conducted by his underlings who attempted to murder a U.S. agent in a border city. The agent had identified the cartel's shipping routes, which cost the Carrillo Fuentes organization millions of dollars in lost cocaine revenue. After the murder attempt, the agent was quickly relocated to an inland post for his own safety.

The 1995 murder of the brother of a high-ranking Drug Enforcement Agency official (who has since retired) was belatedly tied to the drug kingpin. Likewise, the 1994 disappearance and presumed murder of a U.S. telecommunications expert who apparently was a low-level free-lance operative gathering intelligence information in Jaurez for an unidentified U.S. agency.

These two incidents are just part of the escalating border violence in Juarez, where 600 people have been killed in the last two years.

The violence is an indication of the drug kingpin's heightened sense of bravura, drug experts say.

"Amado is becoming richer and more violent. The drug gangs are doing business at a higher level and they are striking at their competitors and at the United States," said Don Ferrarone, special agent in charge of the DEA's office in Houston. "We've warned Washington."

At the July Southwest Drug Summit in El Paso, U.S. officials announced tighter policies to curtail drug trafficking. But critics, including retired drug enforcement officials, say efforts do not match the message. "Many of the problems we have now arose because we couldn't get Washington interested," said a retired DEA agent, who held a top position in Mexico a few years ago. For a time, agents complained, Washington only cared about getting approval for the North American Trade Agreement, and ignored the resilience of Mexican drug gangs. Indeed, the border has always been a tightrope act for most U.S. of officials. Far from Washington, much of the violence that occurs here is largely unreported. But in the last two years, every law enforcement agency has registered ever higher levels of violence. In January, a Border Patrol agent was killed in Eagle Pass, Tex. Less serious incidents were reported in New Mexico and California.

But it is in Juarez where the violence is spilling over. El Paso police Sgt. Bill Pheil said his city's youth gangs have grown more violent because they work with the Carrillo Fuentes people.

The El Paso-Juarez area is even more important than California and Arizona because it is strategically located near Chihuahua's top-rated highway system, which connects the border with southern Mexico, where many drug shipments originate. Juarez '0 has become as important as the Colombian cities of Cali and Medellin were to the drug trade under the Colombian hegemony. Up to 70 percent of the cocaine transported into the United States comes through Mexico and 40 percent of that amount enters through Juarez.

Carrillo Fuentes' web of corruption protects him and feeds him a flow of counterintelligence information on U.S. anti-drug efforts, Juarez journalists and U.S. officials say.

Privately, U.S. officials are concerned about the escalating violence. "Sure we are concerned about them attempting to hit U.S. agents," said Robert S. Gelbard, assistant secretary of state for narcotics. "But there is no doubt in my mind that the violence will increase to the degree the Mexican government keeps up the pressure."

Officials say that Mexican traffickers would not attempt to carry out attacks similar to the 1986 kidnapping and murder of DEA agent Enrique Camarena. Recent events, though, do no warrant this reassurance.

Take, for example what appeared to be an apparent carjacking in January 1995. Killed was Bruno Jordan, 27, the younger brother of Phil Jordan, a veteran DEA official and former head of El Paso Intelligence Center a DEA-run outfit. That same month Phil Jordan, 51, was taking over the position as head of EPIC.

Initially, the Jordan family thought the murder was a common crime. The killer, a 13-year-old Juarez boy, had stole the brand new Silverado truck Bruno was driving. The boy is serving a 15.-year sentence at a Texas youth facility, but in an independent investigation, the family unearthed new evidence which they say indicates the murder was ordered by Carrillo Fuentes.

"This was not a hit over a truck," said Virginia Jordan, Bruno's sister. "Our brother was lured with the truck to the place where he was shot."

According to the family investigation, all the young members of the car-theft ring who knew about the carjacking were killed after the Jordan murder. The brother of the young killer was beaten and drowned in the Rio Grande after the Jordan family approached him to testify. Phil Jordan, now working as a security specialist for the Dallas Cowboys, is convinced his brother was killed because of his work.

For the family of telecommunications wizard Saul Sanchez, his disappearance in May 1994 is baffling. The family now suspects Sanchez was gathering intelligence on drug traffickers for an unidentified U.S. agency, but has been unable to find answers for many of its questions despite a two-year search. U.S. officials have denied that Sanchez worked for any agency.

Still, family members and Sanchez' colleagues said he sold sophisticated listening devices to police and drug traffickers and had been very concerned about his safety weeks before his disappearance. A native of Laredo, Tex., he and his Mexican wife left home to attend the theater in downtown Juarez. They vanished, leaving behind five children.

Juarez journalists theorize that Sanchez was executed on orders of Carrillo Fuentes after the U.S. technical expert learned of several drug shipments. A Navy veteran, Sanchez, 37, built telephone listening devices for clients including the Juarez police. A large, friendly man, he had no previous brushes with the law to explain his association with known traffickers. "He sold the devices to the traffickers on the advice of his police friends," recalled his younger brother Sam, who lives in Dallas.

Peter Lupsha, a researcher who specializes on drug trafficking at the University of New Mexico, said Sanchez could have belonged to the shadowy and murky world of low-level intelligence operations. "There are lots of guys out of the service who have skills that can be used in Mexico and get involved in rogue operations."

These rogue operations avoid bilateral problems between the United States and Mexico, which, according to the rules of the game, are supposed to inform each other of any operations conducted in foreign territory.

Lupsha and retired U.S. officials say these shadowy individuals are often necessary because of the rampant corruption in border cities, which compromise anti-drug efforts. It is believed that Rubalcava and other informants killed by traffickers in the last two years were found out when corrupt Mexican officials learned of their double identities. The murders of informants resound in Juarez.

A French art dealer bought art for drug dealers but disappeared because she had friends who were suspected informants. A woman who was a cousin of Carrillo Fuentes was detained by U.S. authorities and talked too much; she was killed when she returned to Juarez. A beautiful radio reporter regularly passed information on to U.S. officials after wooing corrupt police of officers; she was shot on the face by a hit man who brought red roses from an admirer.

And then there was Felipe Javier Lardizabal, the police investigator who found out about corrupt police officials who allowed the use of the Juarez Airport to unload drug shipments.

Carrillo Fuentes was the first to demand that Colombians pay his organization with cocaine for transporting the drug to the U.S. market. He also gained entry into Colombian cocaine markets in Chicago, Atlanta, Oklahoma and Seattle. These were the preliminary steps which allowed the Carrillo Fuentes organization to develop independent enterprises which he now combines with amphetamine and marijuana trade.

Now a multimillionaire, Carrillo Fuentes was the first to coordinate multi-ton cocaine shipments aboard large 727 passenger jets refitted to take cargo. Many of these shipments were flown directly into the Juarez Airport, where they were guarded by Mexican federal police.

He also strengthened relations with Peruvian traffickers who have taken up residence in Mexico, and has recruited Bolivians to work directly under his organization. In May, he lost his top Bolivian lieutenant, Jose Pereira Salas, who was intercepted by Mexican authorities as he returned to Mexico from a meeting in Bogota and was turned over to the DEA.

Carrillo Fuentes dreams of overstepping the Colombians in cocaine production. The drug lord is testing several shipping routes to bring cocaine directly to Mexico, but U.S. officials said he is having logistical problems.

With the 1995 murder of Alberto Ochoa Soto, a top Colombian trafficker, Carrillo Fuentes closed a chapter in Mexico's drug trafficking annals.

Ochoa Soto, 51, was his friend and colleague for more than ten years. A member of the Ochoa clan from Medellin, Colombia, Ochoa Soto broke the rules and taught Carrillo Fuentes a number of tricks of the trade, which allowed him to advance quicker and reinforce his earlier relations with the Colombian drug cartels.

In Medellin, Ochoa's nephews, the once-powerful Ochoa brothers, are apparently fuming at Carrillo Fuentes' sleight-of-hand. "We are men of peace," Jorge Ochoa, the eldest, told a reporter, "We won't seek revenge." But in reality, the Colombians know that Carrillo Fuentes got them at their worst time, when most Colombian cartels are cutting deals with the Colombian government and can't devote as much of their attention to Amado Carrillo Fuentes.

ANA ARANA covered Central America, Colombia and Venezuela for the Miami Herald, U.S. News and World Report and the Baltimore Sun from 1987 to 1993. Since then, she has done independent investigative reporting and directed the Americas program for the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. This article, the product of a three-month investigation, includes reporting by Norman Navarro of El Imparcial in Hermosillo, Mexico and a team from El Tiempo in Bogota, Colombia.

[End]