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Against the Drug War

By Tom W. Bell and Glen Whitman

Via Radley, here is an outstanding editorial by the creators of The Wire advocating an end to the drug war. At the end, they call for outright jury nullification:

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will ? to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty ? no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

Nice. Too bad this public manifesto means that none of the authors will ever be on the jury for a drug case. Our system is rigged to make sure drug-crime defendants never get the most sympathetic jurors.

Full post as published by Agoraphilia on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).