Leonard D. Harden

The Cost of a DWI in New Hampshire

2012-02-21T14:54:00.003-05:00

TheCost of a DWI in New Hampshire

Iam frequently asked “how much will a DWI cost me?” The ultimate expenditure depends upon manyvariables. One thing is certain: a DWIconviction will be very expensive. Thisarticle will provide an analysis of the current costs associated with a DWIconviction in the State of New Hampshire, while emphasizing the importance ofretaining qualified counsel.

Themost effective way to avert the expense of a DWI is to avoid a conviction. Two obvious ways to do so are to abstain fromall use of drugs and/or alcohol when operating a vehicle or to use a designateddriver. While it is not against the lawto drink and drive in New Hampshire, doing so will certainly expose you to thepossibility of an arrest and conviction.

Ifyou have been arrested, you should immediately seek out a qualified DWIattorney. Hiring the best DWI lawyerbased on reputation, experience, trial skill and knowledge will increase thelikelihood of avoiding a conviction. Iroutinely get referrals from other lawyers, police officers and judges. You should ask professionals in the field whothey would hire if they were in trouble.

Doyou get what you pay for? There are manylawyers who claim to defend DWI cases. Often times, you will find that these lawyers charge very little torepresent you and frequently plead a case out to mandatory minimums. A lawyer that focuses much of their caseloadon DWI defense is regularly going to trial on behalf of clients and issuccessful in winning those cases. During your search for a qualified defense attorney, it is imperativethat you ask him or her when they last won a DWI trial. The expense of a true DWI lawyer pales incomparison to the cost of a DWI conviction. You cannot afford to hire anyone but the best.

Thelist below represents the expenses associated with a DWI based on informationgathered in 2012.

Towing Fee $150

BailCommissioner Fee $40

Labanalysis $150

ALSTranscript $250

ExpertFees $500-$3,000 (Private Investigator, Toxicologist, etc.)

Lawyer fees $1,500-$7,500 (variesbased on reputation, experience and history)

Courtfine $620-$1,200(mandatory minimum to maximum)

ALSRecording $25

Ignitioninterlock $200 initial setup / $75 monthly feefor 2 years

SR-22 $500-$700required for three years (liabilityonly, non owner policy)

Insuranceincrease for 5 years $5,500(based on a married person, good credit history, newervehicle, home owner, in Coos County, rates vary considerably based on insurancehistory and criteria)

IDIPfee $585(first time offender class)

PhaseII $1,550(second or Aggravated offender class)

28Residential Treatment $4,935(third offender class)

Licensereinstatement $100

Thetotal expected financial cost of a DWI for a person located in Coos County, NewHampshire ranges between $10,000 to $18,000.00. This estimate does not include any lost income from missed workopportunities, the need to pay for rides or transportation, and the loss ofcompany vehicles or benefits. Additionally,the increased cost of insurance will vary incredibly from one person to anotherbased on prior history and projected risk factors calculated by insurance companies.

Othersources, not specific to New Hampshire, estimate the cost of a DWI to bebetween $9,000 and $20,000 (see links: http://www.bankrate.com/finance/personal-finance/dui-memorial-day-20-000-1.aspx#ixzz1mNpkU6G5and http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/InTheNews/DrinkingAndDriving/1077646292.html).

Thecost of a DWI conviction is very serious. If you have been charged with a DWI it is important that you immediatelyconsult with a DWI lawyer who has the experience, skills and ability to helpwin your case.

This article was submitted by Leonard D.Harden of Harden Law Offices.

Lancaster, NH 788-2080 ● Littleton, NH 444-2084 ● Lebanon 448-3737

http://www.dwilawyernh.net/

2012-02-10T13:24:00.001-05:00

The New Yorker recently had an article citing the seriousness of America’s growing prison population. The article discusses the sheer numbers of Americans incarcerated and breaks it down to show how minorities and drug convictions have greatly skewed our society. Most telling is that at this moment America has more citizens incarcerated than the Soviet’s put in the Gulags or than were owned as slaves. We as a society are now investing millions of dollars in housing inmates instead of education, infrastructure and drug counseling. The resources being used to house inmates is absolutely counter to creating a productive society which is based on opportunity and merits. The next time a prison expansion is proposed think about what else could have been done with the funds?

The Caging of America

Plymouth District Division Court – State v. Edward S. -Not Guilty

2012-02-08T15:24:00.001-05:00

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Plymouth District Division Court – State v. Edward S. -NotGuilty

Plymouth District Division Courtheard the evidence on February 2, 2012, where Judge Rappa was presiding. Judge Rappa heard the state’s case which consisted of one police officer, avideo of the stop and field sobriety tests. Mr. S. had submitted to abreath test, but due to an error by the State, the test was excluded fromevidence.

The police officer was questioned byAttorney Harden about his observations of Mr. S.’s driving, personal contactand the field sobriety tests. AttorneyHarden was able to establish that Mr. S. walked normally, talked normally andbehaved normally.

After the State rested, AttorneyHarden rested and made a motion to dismiss. The issues in this case werereally impairment and the failure of the police to properly perform the FST aswell as any alternative tests. Attorney Harden was also able to show manysigns of sobriety that the officer failed to note in direct or in theirreports. In the end, Attorney Harden wasable to show that Mr. S. exhibited more clues of sobriety than impairment.

The Judge ruled from the bench immediatelyupon the defense resting finding Mr. S. not guilty. The State had failedto prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. S. was driving while his abilitywas impaired.

Mr. S. had earlier won an administrativelicense suspension hearing. This meansthat Mr. S. suffered absolutely no loss of license, will not pay any increasein insurance or have to take any classes.

Child of War, A Memoir by Jason Flores-Williams

2012-02-07T14:48:00.000-05:00

This is an intensely personal account of how the war on drugs affected a young man and his family. This boy grew up without a father and is now a lawyer in New Mexico. The link is to his personal story of how drugs affected his family’s life and ultimately put his father in prison for 35 years.

http://brooklynrail.org/2007/12/express/child-of-war

UNITED STATES v. JONES

2012-01-27T11:46:00.000-05:00

This 9-0 decision holds that the Government cannot attach a GPS devise to a vehicle to obtain travel information of vehicles whereabouts. The court in holding the GPS as an unreasonable search relied heavily upon the 4^th Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches. This case is the first dealing with GPS information that holds it was unreasonable for the government to trespass upon the defendant’s vehicle. The Court’s reliance on common law trespass leaves many unanswered issues. There are increasingly advanced technologies that do not require any physical trespass yet provide information to the government. The long term effect of the Jones decision remains to be seen. What about satellites, drones, cell phones, security cameras, micro chips none of which require any physical trespass?

It will be interesting to see. This decision is a positive development for the 4^th Amendment and bodes positively as it seems to indicate that at the Supreme Court there are limits to government action. However, the reasoning may enable the government to side step the issue in the future with advanced technology that doesn’t require any physical trespass.

UNITED STATES v. JONES
The Decision

Littleton District Division Court- State v. Thomas S. – Not Guilty

2012-01-25T14:49:00.001-05:00

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Littleton District Division Court- State v. Thomas S. – Not Guilty

Littleton District Division Court was scheduled for a trial on January 24, 2012 at 8:30AM where Judge Cyr was presiding. The charge was Simple Assault-Domestic Violence Related and the case was set for trial. Mr. S and Attorney Harden were present and ready to proceed. The case was called at 9:00AM and nobody from the State was present. The charge was dismissed for failure to prosecute.

Mr. S. is a recently retired career military man who owns multiple firearms. He maintained his innocence throughout the process and asserted his right to remain silent when the police arrived. He still has no criminal conviction and is not prohibited from possessing or using firearms as guaranteed by the 2^nd Amendment.

Haverhill District Division Court – State v. Kevin S. -Not Guilty

2012-01-25T14:42:00.002-05:00

Monday, January 23, 2012

Haverhill District Division Court – State v. Kevin S. -Not Guilty

Haverhill District Division Court heard the evidence on January 23, 2012 where Judge McKenna was presiding. Judge McKenna heard the state’s case which consisted of two police officers. One officer indicated he was headed home and saw a vehicle off the road that had struck a telephone pole, it was approximately 2:30 AM. He observed the driver had a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage, red and blood shot eyes, and admitted to drinking. The second officer was called to the scene from dispatch. The second officer had my client perform field sobriety tests. The officer testified that he failed the three standard tests and refused a breath test. The second officer also smelled the odor of an alcoholic beverage, observed red and blood shot eyes and the client admitted to drinking to that officer.

Mr. S’s. future employment was at stake because if he was found guilty he would not be able to continue working at his chosen career due to a criminal conviction. He had been working for over 15 years and a condition of his employment was no criminal convictions.

Mr. S. had a medical history of a bad back, eye surgery and was heavyset for his height. After cross examination of the officers, Attorney Harden rested and made a motion to dismiss. The issues in the case were really impairment and the failure of the police to properly perform the FST as well as any alternative tests. Attorney Harden was also able to show many signs of sobriety that the officers failed to note in direct or in their reports.

The Judge took a break to review his notes and returned a verdict of not guilty. The state had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. S. was driving while his ability was impaired. This means that he will remain fully employed and has no criminal record.

Allen St. Pierre on Medical Marijuana

2012-01-19T13:59:00.000-05:00

I agree with the sham comments. I would add the increased social costs of criminalizing possession. I have represented many good, hard working Americans who have criminal records by mere possession that end up costing employment advancement, student loan and educational opportunities.

Allen St. Pierre on Medical Marijuana

Thursday, 05 January 2012 21:17

119 Comments and 39 Reactions

Defending the "medical" cannabis industry is so yesterday. Why not acknowledge the political and legal farce it is and focus on the real problem at hand: ending cannabis prohibition?

The law and court precedents are fairly clear here. Self-preservation (yes), large-scale cultivation and sales (no). It's just this simple. The numerous actions by the Feds and state governments over the last few months make this abundantly clear:

• ATF memo (no Second Amendment rights for patients)
• Feds crackdown on banks doing business with CBCs (cannabis buyers' clubs)
• Feds send forfeiture notices to CBC landlords
• Feds send warnings to local CBCs that they must move or shut because they’re within 1,000 feet of a federally subsidized school
• IRS 280E decision against Harborside Health Center
• Feds send shutdown notices to 25% of the CBCs in San Diego

And what more re-assertion of primacy will we get from the Feds today?

If this were the 1920s, advocacy of today's "medical" cannabis industry would sound like a lawyer back then fronting for the legal sellers of "prescription" alcohol during Prohibition. The med-pot industry, of course, opposes actual legalization, such as last year’s Prop 19, which was also opposed by the profiteering communities in the state’s northern "grow" counties.

Prescriptive alcohol was a sham then, and the "medical" cannabis industry (not medical cannabis itself) is largely a sham now. Is this news? NORML, and lawyers like Bill Panzer, have been warning ganjapreneurs and their legal counsel at our seminars and conferences about this political and legal box canyon since at least 2002.

Cannabis consumers, who NORML represents, want good, affordable cannabis products without having to go through the insult and expense of "qualifying" as a "medical" patient by paying physicians and/or the state for some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card. How intellectually honest is all of this?

NORML prefers to take a more transparent approach, advocating that cannabis should be legal for all adult consumers, including healthy ones.

Allen St. Pierre is the executive director of NORML

Jury Trial: Coos County Superior Court

2012-01-18T17:53:00.000-05:00

State v. Michael S., Coos County Superior Court 1-17 and 18, 2012.

Michael S. was charged with Criminal Threatening with a Firearm (Class B Felony), carrying a mandatory minimum of 3-6 years in the NH State Prison. He was also charged with Resisting Arrest or Detention.

The State alleged Michael S. pointed a firearm at a person and threatened to blow off her head. The State claimed to have two eyewitnesses to the Criminal Threatening who witnessed Michael S. point the gun and make a comment about blowing off her head. Michael S. was also charged with Resisting Arrest or Detention for running away from the scene after being ordered to remain by a police officer. The trial began on January 17, 2012, and ended today at 1:55PM. The state called multiple police officers and two eyewitnesses.

During the trial there were multiple inconsistent statements made by the two supposed eyewitnesses. The person who claimed the firearm was pointed at her head had a history of defrauding others and was shown to be untrustworthy, dishonest and lacking in credibility during cross examination. The other supposed eyewitness completely changed her story and told the jury a third version of events. This story was different than her statement on the date of the incident and another made prior to the trial. Each of these versions was substantially different and cast even greater doubt on the other eyewitness. After cross examination of the State's witnesses, the defense rested and did not call any witnesses. The burden of proof rests with the State and based upon the evidence submitted, the defense believed that there was a reasonable doubt.

The jury received the case at 12:30 PM and returned a verdict of not guilty on the Criminal Threatening charge at 1:55PM. The judge had earlier dismissed the Resisting Arrest charge finding that no reasonable juror could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Michael S. resisted arrest or detention. This means that Michael S. was acquitted of all charges and is a free man.

2012-01-14T13:07:00.002-05:00

A NY Times article..............

Jurors Need to Know That They Can Say No

By PAUL BUTLER

Washington
IF you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote “not guilty” — even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.
The information I have just provided — about a constitutional doctrine called “jury nullification” — is absolutely true. But if federal prosecutors in New York get their way, telling the truth to potential jurors could result in a six-month prison sentence.
Earlier this year, prosecutors charged Julian P. Heicklen, a retired chemistry professor, with jury tampering because he stood outside the federal courthouse in Manhattan providing information about jury nullification to passers-by. Given that I have been recommending nullification for nonviolent drug cases since 1995 — in such forums as The Yale Law Journal, “60 Minutes” and YouTube — I guess I, too, have committed a crime.
The prosecutors who charged Mr. Heicklen said that “advocacy of jury nullification, directed as it is to jurors, would be both criminal and without constitutional protections no matter where it occurred.” The prosecutors in this case are wrong. The First Amendment exists to protect speech like this — honest information that the government prefers citizens not know.
Laws against jury tampering are intended to deter people from threatening or intimidating jurors. To contort these laws to justify punishing Mr. Heicklen, whose court-appointed counsel describe him as “a shabby old man distributing his silly leaflets from the sidewalk outside a courthouse,” is not only unconstitutional but unpatriotic. Jury nullification is not new; its proponents have included John Hancock and John Adams.
The doctrine is premised on the idea that ordinary citizens, not government officials, should have the final say as to whether a person should be punished. As Adams put it, it is each juror’s “duty” to vote based on his or her “own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”
In 1895, the Supreme Court ruled that jurors had no right, during trials, to be told about nullification. The court did not say that jurors didn’t have the power, or that they couldn’t be told about it, but only that judges were not required to instruct them on it during a trial. Since then, it’s been up to scholars like me, and activists like Mr. Heicklen, to get the word out.
Nullification has been credited with helping to end alcohol prohibition and laws that criminalized gay sex. Last year, Montana prosecutors were forced to offer a defendant in a marijuana case a favorable plea bargain after so many potential jurors said they would nullify that the judge didn’t think he could find enough jurors to hear the case. (Prosecutors now say they will remember the actions of those jurors when they consider whether to charge other people with marijuana crimes.)
There have been unfortunate instances of nullification. Racist juries in the South, for example, refused to convict people who committed violent acts against civil-rights activists, and nullification has been used in cases involving the use of excessive force by the police. But nullification is like any other democratic power; some people may try to misuse it, but that does not mean it should be taken away from everyone else.
How one feels about jury nullification ultimately depends on how much confidence one has in the jury system. Based on my experience, I trust jurors a lot. I first became interested in nullification when I prosecuted low-level drug crimes in Washington in 1990. Jurors here, who were predominantly African-American, nullified regularly because they were concerned about racially selective enforcement of the law.
Across the country, crime has fallen, but incarceration rates remain at near record levels. Last year, the New York City police made 50,000 arrests just for marijuana possession. Because prosecutors have discretion over whether to charge a suspect, and for what offense, they have more power than judges over the outcome of a case. They tend to throw the book at defendants, to compel them to plead guilty in return for less harsh sentences. In some jurisdictions, like Washington, prosecutors have responded to jurors who are fed up with their draconian tactics by lobbying lawmakers to take away the right to a jury trial in drug cases. That is precisely the kind of power grab that the Constitution’s framers were so concerned about.
In October, the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, asked at a Senate hearing about the role of juries in checking governmental power, seemed open to the notion that jurors “can ignore the law” if the law “is producing a terrible result.” He added: “I’m a big fan of the jury.” I’m a big fan, too. I would respectfully suggest that if the prosecutors in New York bring fair cases, they won’t have to worry about jury nullification. Dropping the case against Mr. Heicklen would let citizens know that they are as committed to justice, and to free speech, as they are to locking people up.

Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor, is a professor of law at George Washington University and the author of “Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice.”

2012-01-13T07:26:00.002-05:00

Check out this study:

Study: Nearly 1 in 3 U.S. youths will be arrested by age 23
19 Comments

(WebMD) America's youth are in trouble - literally.

Parents and non-parents alike might be shocked to learn a new study estimates that roughly 1 in 3 U.S. youths will be arrested for a non-traffic offense by age 23 - a "substantively higher" proportion than predicted in the 1960s.

The study, posted online by the journal Pediatrics, shows that between about 25% to 41% of 23-year-olds have been arrested or taken into police custody at least once for a non-traffic offense. If you factor in missing cases, that percentage could lie between about 30% and 41%.

What was learned was that the risk was greatest during late adolescence or emerging adulthood. The study also shows that by age 18, about 16% to 27% have been arrested.

"It's a wake-up call," says Robert Sege, MD, PhD, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect, who was not involved in the study.

"By and large, we pediatricians tend to see our patients as victims," says Sege, a pediatrics professor at Boston University. But, he notes, the new report suggests pediatricians must also consider that their patients could become victimizers.

They are also setting themselves up for a destructive and toxic start to life, whether from violent and unsafe behavior, to an increased risk for an unhealthy lifestyle.

The researchers base their conclusion on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, ages 8 to 23. Data analyzed in the new study came from national surveys of youth conducted annually from 1997 to 2008.

Their finding contrasts with a 1965 study that predicted 22% of U.S. youths would be arrested for an offense other than a minor traffic violation by age 23.

Why the Rise in Arrests?

The researchers cite some "compelling reasons" for the increase.

"The criminal justice system has clearly become more aggressive in dealing with offenders (particularly those who commit drug offenses and violent crimes) since the 1960s," the authors, all criminologists, write. In addition, "there is some evidence that the transition from adolescence to adulthood has become a longer process."

From the 1920s through the 1960s, the proportion of the population that was incarcerated remained remarkably stable at about 100 inmates per 100,000 people, researcher Robert Brame, PhD, of the department of criminal justice and criminology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, tells WebMD. Today, Brame says, that figure has soared to 500 inmates per 100,000 people.

More aggressive treatment of offenders has led to a decline in the crime rate, Brame says: "I think it's pretty clear that some violent crimes have been prevented by having people locked up in prison."

But he questions whether the expense of incarceration -- $25,000 to $30,000 per person per year -- is the best use of the money. Perhaps the funds would be better spent on programs that not only could lower the crime rate but carry other benefits as well, such as stopping a person from committing a crime in the first place, Brame says.

"Criminologists and economists are wrestling with that question right now," he says.

Brame, the father of three young children, says he and his colleagues usually publish their research in journals read by criminologists, not pediatricians. But they wanted to reach out to pediatricians because they're especially well-suited to heading off problems.

"Our main purpose in this paper was to get pediatricians to think about this and maybe have a broader discussion with their patients than they otherwise would have."

Young people might feel more comfortable talking with their pediatrician than their parents about such issues as drug use, Brame says: "The pediatrician has training and skills to connect that person with appropriate programs and interventions."

By Rita Rubin
Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD

SOURCES:Brame, R. Pediatrics, study received ahead of print.Robert Brame, PhD, professor of criminal justice and criminology, University of North Carolina, Charlotte.Robert Sege, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics, Boston University.

2012-01-12T15:16:00.000-05:00

A recent NY Times article........

Police Officers Find That Dissent on Drug Laws May Come With a Price

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

United States Customs and Border Protection agents waiting to inspect cars at Nogales, Ariz., an area where marijuana smuggling has been active.

By MARC LACEY

Published: December 2, 2011

Looking for signs of smugglers near Nogales, Ariz., alongside the fence that now marks part of the nation's border with Mexico.

Stationed in Deming, N.M., Mr. Gonzalez was in his green-and-white Border Patrol vehicle just a few feet from the international boundary when he pulled up next to a fellow agent to chat about the frustrations of the job. If marijuana were legalized, Mr. Gonzalez acknowledges saying, the drug-related violence across the border in Mexico would cease. He then brought up an organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition that favors ending the war on drugs.
Those remarks, along with others expressing sympathy for illegal immigrants from Mexico, were passed along to the Border Patrol headquarters in Washington. After an investigation, a termination letter arrived that said Mr. Gonzalez held “personal views that were contrary to core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication and esprit de corps.”
After his dismissal, Mr. Gonzalez joined a group even more exclusive than the Border Patrol: law enforcement officials who have lost their jobs for questioning the war on drugs and are fighting back in the courts.
In Arizona, Joe Miller, a probation officer in Mohave County, near the California border, filed suit last month in Federal District Court after he was dismissed for adding his name to a letter by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which is based in Medford, Mass., and known as LEAP, expressing support for the decriminalization of marijuana.
“More and more members of the law enforcement community are speaking out against failed drug policies, and they don’t give up their right to share their insight and engage in this important debate simply because they receive government paychecks,” said Daniel Pochoda, the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which is handling the Miller case.
Mr. Miller was one of 32 members of LEAP who signed the letter, which expressed support for a California ballot measure that failed last year that would have permitted recreational marijuana use. Most of the signers were retired members of law enforcement agencies, who can speak their minds without fear of action by their bosses. But Mr. Miller and a handful of others who were still on the job — including the district attorney for Humboldt County in California and the Oakland city attorney — signed, too.
LEAP has seen its membership increase significantly from the time it was founded in 2002 by five disillusioned officers. It now has an e-mail list of 48,000, and its members include 145 judges, prosecutors, police officers, prison guards and other law enforcement officials, most of them retired, who speak on the group’s behalf.
“No one wants to be fired and have to fight for their job in court,” said Neill Franklin, a retired police officer who is LEAP’s executive director. “So most officers are reluctant to sign on board. But we do have some brave souls.”
Mr. Miller was accused of not making clear that he was speaking for himself and not the probation department while advocating the decriminalization of cannabis. His lawsuit, though, points out that the letter he signed said at the bottom, “All agency affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.”
He was also accused of dishonesty for denying that he had given approval for his name to appear on the LEAP letter. In the lawsuit, Mr. Miller said that his wife had given approval without his knowledge, using his e-mail address, but that he had later supported her.
Kip Anderson, the court administrator for the Superior Court in Mohave County, said there was no desire to limit Mr. Miller’s political views.
“This isn’t about legalization,” Mr. Anderson said. “We’re not taking a stand on that. We just didn’t want people to think he was speaking on behalf of the probation department.”
Mr. Miller, who is also a retired police officer and Marine, lost an appeal of his dismissal before a hearing officer. But when his application for unemployment benefits was turned down, he appealed that and won. An administrative law judge found that Mr. Miller had not been dishonest with his bosses and that the disclaimer on the letter was sufficient.
In the case of Mr. Gonzalez, the fired Border Patrol agent, he had not joined LEAP but had expressed sympathy with the group’s cause. “It didn’t make sense to me why marijuana is illegal,” he said. “To see that thousands of people are dying, some of whom I know, makes you want to look for a change.”
Since his firing, Mr. Gonzalez, who filed suit in federal court in Texas in January, has worked as a construction worker, a bouncer and a yard worker. He has also gone back to school, where he is considering a law degree.

“I don’t want to work at a place that says I can’t think,” said Mr. Gonzalez, who grew up in El Paso, just across the border from Ciudad Juárez, which has experienced some of the worst bloodshed in Mexico.
The Justice Department, which is defending the Border Patrol, has sought to have the case thrown out. Mr. Gonzalez lost a discrimination complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which sided with his supervisors’ view that they had lost trust that he would uphold the law.
Those challenging their dismissals are buoyed by the case of Jonathan Wender, who was fired as a police sergeant in Mountlake Terrace, Wash., in 2005, partly as a result of his support for the decriminalization of marijuana. Mr. Wender won a settlement of $815,000 as well as his old job back. But he retired from the department and took up teaching at the University of Washington, where one of his courses is “Drugs and Society.”
Among those not yet ready to publicly urge the legalization of drugs is a veteran Texas police officer who quietly supports LEAP and spoke on the condition that he not be identified. “We all know the drug war is a bad joke,” he said in a telephone interview. “But we also know that you’ll never get promoted if you’re seen as soft on drugs.”
Mr. Franklin, the LEAP official, said it was natural that those on the front lines of enforcing drug laws would have strong views on them, either way. It was the death of a colleague at the hands of a drug dealer in 2000 that prompted Mr. Franklin, a veteran officer, to begin questioning the nation’s drug policies. Some of his colleagues, though, hit the streets even more aggressively, he said.
Mr. Franklin said he got calls all the time from colleagues skeptical about the drug laws as they are written but unwilling to speak out — yet.
“I was speaking to a guy with the Maryland State Police this past Saturday, and he’s about to retire in January and he’s still reluctant to join us until he leaves,” Mr. Franklin said. “He wants to have a good last couple of months, without any hassle.”

Decided by a nose? Court ponders drug dog's sniff

2012-01-11T07:42:00.001-05:00

An interesting Boston Globe article:

Decided by a nose? Court ponders drug dog's sniff

Lancaster District Court - Not Guilty

2011-12-28T12:24:00.000-05:00

Lancaster District Division heard the evidence on December 20, 2011 where Judge King took under advisement a charge of operation on open water contrary to RSA 215-C:7. Judge King issued his decision with a clerk’s notice of December 22, 2011 finding Mr. M not guilty. Judge King found that the State had failed to prove that the area of water on which the defendant’s snowmobile traveled was “free of ice and snow” at the time of operation.

Does Marijuana make you a better driver?

2011-12-24T10:46:00.000-05:00

I wanted to share this POPSCI article:

Medical Marijuana Laws Shown to Reduce Traffic Fatalities

Well, that settles that

By Clay Dillow Posted 11.30.2011 at 2:59 pm 52 Comments

A U.S. Government Medical Crop at the University of Mississippi

Any attempt to segue into this post with a clever lead is likely to fall flat, so in the interest of skipping the cliches: a new study out of University of Colorado Denver and Montana State University shows that legalizing medical marijuana sales in various states over the past two decades has led to a nearly 10 percent drop in traffic fatalities. What the study really shows--by way of causal chain--is a five percent drop in beer sales, and that has in turn led to fewer fatalities on the road. Put that in your pipe and smoke it (couldn’t resist just one).
This is the kind of study that’s going to be attacked from all sides, by those with agendas and those who will simply point out that establishing that causal link between legalized pot and the decrease in alcohol sales (and in turn the reduced traffic deaths) is difficult with all the variables out there. But it is an interesting study for no other reason than it actually attempts to measure the effects of legalizing pot by linking it to some kind of hard data rather than some hard-to-quantify metric.
That, of course, is traffic data, of which we have plenty. Traffic data is bountiful and generally pretty good because incidents on the road--particularly those that involve injury or fatality--very rarely go unnoticed by authorities, who are required to dutifully record them in the public record. So Daniel Rees of UC Denver and D. Mark Anderson of MSU started looking at the traffic data both nationwide and more particularly in the 13 states that legalized marijuana for medical use between 1990 and 2009. They found several connections and trends that seemingly stem from the legalization laws, but most notably they found evidence that alcohol consumption by 20- to 29-year-olds decreased, and that translated into fewer deaths on the road. Previous simulator studies have shown that drinkers tend to drive more aggressively and take more risks, while marijuana users tilt toward risk-averse behaviors. Notably, they also found that in the states that legalized marijuana there was no evidence of an uptick in use among minors, which is a major concern for the medical marijuana opposition.
To be fair, establishing these kinds of links is still difficult as variable abound and the data is sometimes difficult to trust. Common sense (experience?) tells us that kids smoking pot generally don’t go around telling adults about it, including those conducting academic research. So establishing whether or not more or fewer kids are getting high is more or less an exercise in guesswork. And Rees and Anderson point out that while alcohol is often consumed in public places marijuana is consumed privately, often in the home. So making marijuana use a publicly acceptable activity for all people--not just those with a medical necessity--might diminish the reduction in traffic fatalities as more stoney drivers get behind the wheel.
But things being what they are, medical marijuana laws appear to be trending toward safer roadways, and that’s all this study purports to demonstrate. Place whatever value on that you will. PopSci would like to point out that this post does not constitute an opinion either for or against the legalization of medical marijuana, and Rees’s and Anderson’s findings are just, like, their opinions, man.

Lancaster District Court

2011-12-24T10:41:00.000-05:00

Case Conclusion Date: December 20, 2011, Lancaster District Court.
Practice Area: DUI / DWI
Outcome: Not guilty by judge
Description: DWI with a blood test of .13. No FSTs. Client arrested due to multiple lay witnesses claiming impaired driving including four officers. Each witness is cross examined to expose contradictions with the others. Blood test suppressed due to failure to establish a chain of custody. Issues involving the blood test were addressed as well. The judge found no proof of impairment and entered a not guilty finding.

Peterson Gets a New Trial

2011-12-17T09:55:00.002-05:00

This case is a highly political and publicized one where there were numerous issues involving the investigation.

I have met Attorney Rudolf personally and know how hard he worked on this trial and has continued to work. He came to NH and was a dynamic speaker at a seminar hosted by the NH Association of Criminal Defense lawyer last year.

I congratulate him on his persistence and dedication to see that justice is done. The hard work, time and effort expended by Attorney Rudolf and his staff is a testament to his level of professionalism and commitment.

It is rewarding to know that the work we do as criminal defense attorneys can ultimately result in justice even after a verdict. Thank you for you example of how to be a trial lawyer and congratulations again.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/12/15/2850918/peterson-gets-a-new-trial.html

Coos County Superior Court, December 15, 2011

2011-12-16T05:31:00.003-05:00

State v. Vincent F., Coos County Superior Court

Final pretrial was set for December 15, 2011 with jury selection set for January 5, 2012 on a second degree assault. We had notified the State of a defense of others and were prepared to go to trial. After reviewing the evidence the State nolle prossed or dropped the charges against Mr. F. on December 13, 2011. This means that Mr. F. did not have to go to trial and prove he acted in defense of another and that he has no criminal conviction as a result.

Conway District Court , December 13, 2011

2011-12-16T05:30:00.004-05:00

State v. Timothy C., 3rd Circuit- District Division Conway

Trial was scheduled for December 13, 2011 at 1 PM. Mr. C. was charged with possession a controlled drug. The case was called and the State sought a continuance which the Court denied. The case was dismissed for lack of prosecution as the State had failed to have witnesses available for court. Mr. C is a graduate student who will be finishing his degree next spring. A criminal conviction for possessing cannabis would have been devastating for his job search and future. We were prepared for trial and had a very solid defense. Thankfully the State failed to bring a material witness and the matter was dismissed summarily. Mr. C. is now able to finish his schooling and proceed into the workforce without a criminal conviction.

NY Times: Admissible Evidence or a Backdoor Ploy? Justices Ask

2011-12-15T13:21:00.000-05:00

The defense bar has been pleasantly surprised by the strength of Justice Scalia’s opinions protecting the 6^th Amendment and the right to confrontation. Justice Scalia remains the strongest voice in support of the 6^th Amendment on the high court, defending the right to confrontation in Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, 129 S.Ct. 2527 (2009), which held that it was a violation of the right of confrontation for a prosecutor to submit a chemical drug test report without the testimony of the person who performed the test. This overturned years of the Supreme Court permitting expert reports without the analyst present (Roberts). Melendez Diaz also clearly held that the analyst’s reports were unconstitutional without the testimony of the person to enable cross examination. Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court in which Stevens, Souter, Thomas, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined. Justice Thomas filed a concurring opinion. Justice Kennedy filed a dissenting opinion, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Breyer and Alito, JJ., joined.

The other case referenced in the article is Bullcoming v. New Mexico which also dealt with a Confrontation Clause case decided on June 23, 2011. In Bullcoming, the Supreme Court considered the issue whether a defendant's 6^th Amendment rights extend to a non-testifying laboratory analyst whose supervisor testifies as to test results that the analyst transcribed from a machine. In a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Ginsburg, in which Justices Scalia, Sotamayor and Kagan and Thomas in part concurred for the majority, while Justices Kennedy, Roberts, Breyer and Alito dissented.

It is interesting to note that the divide in the court ignores political appointments of the justices and is very stark as it relates to the 6^th Amendment. The Williams case seems to be setting up the same 5-4 decision which will hopefully will protect a defendant’s right to make the government prove its case with live testimony capable of being cross examined. These cases along with Crawford and Strickland have over ruled the exceptions to the hearsay rule that were common for years under Roberts. Hopefully the Supreme Court will continue to protect cross examination so that it may remain "the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth." This conclusion is supported by comparing the historical purposes of confrontation with the alleged dangers in admitting an out-of-court statement. Confrontation: (1) insures that the witness will give his statements under oath - thus impressing him with the seriousness of the matter and guarding against the lie by the possibility of a penalty for perjury; (2) forces the witness to submit to cross-examination, the "greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth"; (3) permits the jury that is to decide the defendant's fate to observe the demeanor of the witness in making his statement, thus aiding the jury in assessing his credibility. 5 Wigmore 1367.

Admissible Evidence, or a Backdoor Ploy? Justices Ask

ALS Hearing results from today at NH DMV

2011-12-08T16:17:00.000-05:00

State v. John M., ALS suspension hearing for a test over .08 was dismissed after the Lisbon police failed to introduce evidence of a breath test pursuant to RSA 265-A:5. In short the Lisbon police arrested John M. for DWI and Aggravated DWI and alleged at the DMV that he took a breath test which revealed a result greater than .08 BRAC, however, they failed to introduce a valid test, certification of the test or the officer’s qualifications to administer a test. Attorney Harden was able to have the case dismissed and John M. has his NH driver’s license restored to operate today.

State Admits Error In Perjury Case

2011-12-08T15:17:00.003-05:00

This is a link to an article written by Khela McGann in the November 23rd edition of The Littleton Courier that covers one of my recent cases.

The American justice system is the best in the world. The system sometimes makes mistakes and can cause people undue hardships both physically and emotionally. However, I truly believe that our system works, sometimes as in this case it takes time and persistence but eventually it will work.

I had the honor of representing Robert Koczur and defending him in a jury trial in Grafton County Superior Court. The jury made a finding against him, and despite my best efforts I was unable to convince the trial court to overturn that conviction. My client had confidence in me and we continued to pursue justice. In Mr. Koczur’s case that justice came from an appeal to the NH Supreme Court where we were able to have the conviction overturned and an acquittal was entered. The Attorney General’s Office confessed error and acknowledged that there was insufficient evidence to proceed. This unusual step by the State meant the end of the criminal case and that Mr. Koczur was confirmed not guilty.

Criminal cases are often very hard on a person’s health and welfare. The stress and aggravation endeared can be difficult. I pride myself on trying to explain the process to client’s and helping them through a tough period in their lives.

http://www.newhampshirelakesandmountains.com/pdf/LIT.2011.11.23.pdf

Harden Law Offices has a NEW location!

2011-12-08T14:14:00.000-05:00

Harden Law Offices is pleased to announce the opening of the Lebanon, NH office at 85 Mechanic Street. Attorney Harden will now be able to better serve clients in lower Grafton county. He may be reached at 448-3737. Attorney Harden practices only DWI and Criminal Defense law. Call today for a free initial consultation!

2011-11-23T08:56:00.000-05:00

Prison and jail overcrowding has been a hot topic in New Hampshire, particularly in the past few years. While a large focus has been spent on Probation/Parole violators, it is important to look at the underlying conviction that led to the incarceration. How many of those were actually for violent crimes? There have been several studies about the composition of the NH State Prison and suggestions for ways to reduce the overall number. Politicians have been driven to reduce the number of Probation/Parole violators as a solution. While it is true that there are a substantial number of violators in our Prisons, how many of those individuals truly need community supervision? Many of these violators are those who have had underlying drug or drug related convictions and the POs have brought them back after numerous positive urine screens, failed rehab attempts and new minor convictions. Caseloads for these Parole Officers are extremely high and I think most are of the opinion that supervision is inappropriate for non-violent offenses. The focus should be more on diversion programs and other alternatives. It is cost-effective for the State and beneficial to the defendant.

A Country of Inmates

By ALBERT R. HUNT | BLOOMBERG NEWS

Published: November 20, 2011

NY Times

WASHINGTON — One area where the United States indisputably leads the world is incarceration.

The United States has 2.3 million people behind bars, almost one in every 100 Americans. The U.S. prison population has more than doubled over the past 15 years, and one in nine black children has a parent in jail.

Proportionally, the United States has four times as many prisoners as Israel, six times as many as Canada or China, eight times as many as Germany and 13 times as many as Japan.

With just a little more than 4 percent of the world’s population, the United States accounts for a quarter of the planet’s prisoners and has more inmates than the leading 35 European countries combined. Almost all the other nations with high per capita prison rates are in the developing world.

There’s also a national election in the United States soon. This issue isn’t on the agenda. It’s almost never come up with Republican presidential candidates; one of the few exceptions was at a debate in September when the audience cheered the notion of executions in Texas.

Barack Obama, the first black president, rarely mentions this question or how it disproportionately affects minorities. More than 60 percent of the United States’ prisoners are black or Hispanic, though these groups comprise less than 30 percent of the population.

“We’ve had a race to incarcerate that has been driven by politics, racially coded, get-tough appeals,” said Michelle Alexander, a law professor at Ohio State University who wrote “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”

The escalating cost of the criminal-justice system is an important factor in the fiscal challenges around the United States. Nowhere is that more evident than in California, which is struggling to obey a court order requiring it to reduce its overcrowded prisons by 40,000 inmates.

Today, there are 140,000 convicts in California’s state prisons, who cost about $50,000 each per year. The state pays more on prisons than it does on higher education.

Yet the prisons are so crowded — as many as 54 inmates have to share one toilet — that Conrad Murray, the doctor convicted in the death of the pop star Michael Jackson, may be able to avoid most prison time.

California isn’t unique. In Raleigh County, West Virginia, the county commission has worried that the cost of housing inmates at its Southern Regional Jail may imperil basic services, including education. That problem is exacerbated as the state keeps more prisoners longer at such regional facilities to alleviate its overcrowding problems.

The prison explosion hasn’t been driven by an increase in crime. In fact, the crime rate, notably for violent offenses, is dropping across the United States, a phenomenon that began about 20 years ago.

The latest F.B.I. figures show that murder, rape and robberies have fallen to an almost half-century low; to be sure, they remain higher than in other major industrialized countries.

There are many theories for this decline. The most accepted is that community police work in major metropolitan areas has improved markedly, focusing on potential high-crime areas. There are countless other hypotheses, even ranging to controversial claims that more accessible abortion has reduced a number of unwanted children who were more likely to have committed crimes.

However, one other likely explanation is that more than a few would-be criminals are locked up. Scholars like James Q. Wilson have noted that the longer prison terms that are being handed down may matter more than the conviction rates.

This comes at a clear cost. For those who do ultimately get out, being an ex-con means about a 40 percent decrease in annual earnings.

Moreover, research suggests that children from homes where a father is in jail do considerably less well in life and are more prone to becoming criminals themselves.

“People ask why so many black kids are growing up without fathers,” said Ms. Alexander. “A big part of the answer is mass incarceration.”

It seems clear that the U.S. penal system discriminates against minorities. Some of this is socioeconomic, as poorer people, disproportionately blacks and Hispanics, may commit more crimes.

Much of the inmate explosion and racial disparities, however, grow out of the way the United States treats illegal drugs. It began several decades ago with harsher penalties for crimes involving crack cocaine, which was more widely used by blacks, than powder cocaine, which was more likely to involve whites. A larger issue is how the U.S. criminal justice system differentiates in its treatment of drug sellers — who get the book thrown at them — versus drug users, who, at most, get a slap on the wrist.

A hypothetical example: A black kid is arrested for selling cocaine to the members of a fraternity at an elite university. The seller gets sent away for 25 years. The fraternity is put on probation for a semester by the university and nothing else.

In all likelihood, the convicted seller is quickly replaced, and few of the fraternity kids change their drug-use habits. The lesson: neither the supply nor the demand has changed, and the prison population grows.

Given their budgetary difficulties, about half the states are actually reducing their prison populations. Smart selective policies are cost-effective. Many criminologists and sociologists say the proclivity to commit crimes diminishes with age; the recidivism rate for convicts over 30 is relatively low, and most every analysis suggests that parole and probation are far less expensive for taxpayers than incarceration.

Nevertheless, the politics of the crime issue cuts against any rational approach. Even if recidivism rates are low, it’s the failures that attract attention. In 1988, the Democratic presidential nominee, Michael S. Dukakis, was savaged when it was revealed that one convict, Willie Horton, who was furloughed on his watch as governor of Massachusetts committed a rape while at large. Four years ago, the former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, a Republican, was hurt in his bid for his party’s nomination by reports of crimes committed by felons who were paroled during his time in office.

“One case where a parolee does something very wrong is sensationalized,” Ms. Alexander said, “and many, many others are kept behind bars for a long time.”

Returning Your Right to Bear Arms in New Hampshire

2011-11-17T15:04:00.000-05:00

I routinely help many NH citizens annul felony convictions thereby restoring their right to bear arms. The process is relatively simple and includes a review by a Judge to determine if a person qualifies, then a background check by the Department of Corrections including a criminal records check and finally input from the county attorney. NH law requires a period of 10 years with no conviction of any kind for a class A felony, 5 years for a B felony, and 7 years for any drug offense or special felony.

NH permits annulments pursuant to RSA 651:5 for most felons after a requisite time period of being conviction free. The NH statute excludes certain violent crimes: (a) capital murder, first or second degree murder, manslaughter, or class A felony negligent homicide under RSA 630, (b) First degree assault under RSA 631:1, (c) Aggravated felonious sexual assault or felonious sexual assault under RSA 632-A, (d) Kidnapping or criminal restraint under RSA 633, (e) Class A felony arson under RSA 634:1, (f) Robbery under RSA 636, (g) Incest under RSA 639:2, III or endangering the welfare of a child by solicitation under RSA 639:3, III; or (h) Any felonious child pornography offense under RSA 649-A.. The link to the full NH Statute for annulment is http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/lxii/651/651-5.htm.

Anecdotally, in contrast to the examples in the Times article the last person I sought an annulment on was convicted upon a plea of receiving stolen property in 1986 and had no subsequent convictions including any motor vehicle offenses. He wanted the annulment so that he could go hunting with his son and grandson. He was 22 years old when he made a poor decision and was truly embarrassed that he had been a felon. Another person wanted to annul his record so that he could apply for a better job with his current employer that involved towing vehicles and required that he be bonded. These stories are more typical of the types of people who seek annulments with my office. I am confident that they and the other clients that I have helped restore their constitutional rights will be responsible gun owners and productive members of our community.

In Northern NH gun ownership and gun rights are a very important part of life. Hunting is still very much an activity that is enjoyed across generations and provides some of the most cherished memories for many citizens. A young person who makes a mistake should not be banned for life from an activity after having served their sentence.

The United States currently has the highest rate of incarceration rate in the world. At year-end 2009 it was 743 adults incarcerated per 100,000 population.^{[2][3][4][5][6]}According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) 2,292,133 adults were incarcerated in U.S. federal and state prisons, and county jails at year-end 2009 — about 1% of adults in the U.S. resident population.^[2][3][7][8] Additionally, 4,933,667 adults at year-end 2009 were on probation or on parole.^[2] In total, 7,225,800 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2009 — about 3.1% of adults in the U.S. resident population.^[1][2][9] In addition, there were 86,927 juveniles in juvenile detention in 2007. Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

The NY Times perspective on restoring gun rights to felons is biased and misrepresents the vast majority of cases where citizen’s constitutional right to bear arms is restored.

Felons Finding It Easy to Regain Gun Rights

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/felons-finding-it-easy-to-regain-gun-rights.html?_r=1&ref=crimeandcriminals

2011-11-15T15:10:00.000-05:00

I do believe that civilians and many law enforcement officers are changing their views about marijuana. The recent acts by the Federal Government are a huge step back for so many individuals and entities. We must do our research prior to the next set of elections, so that our voice can be heard.

Losing Hearts and Minds in the Drug War

Posted: 11/14/11 04:51 PM ET

HuffingtonPost.com

Norm Stamper

34-year veteran police officer who retired as Seattle's chief of police in 2000

In the forty years since Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs," Americans' perceptions of that war are finally beginning to shift.
Receding support for Prohibition is happening in large part because of virally circulated news accounts and videos of law enforcement's disturbingly harsh tactics in the drug war. My former colleagues are making clear that besides causing thousands of deaths worldwide and costing billions of taxpayer dollars, the drug war's most serious collateral damage has been to undermine the role of civilian law enforcement in our free society.
In one of the most widely viewed videos, a tiny single-family home is descended upon by a Columbia, Missouri Police Department SWAT team. After pounding on the door and announcing themselves, the cops waste no time. They smash open the door and charge into the unsuspecting family's home.
After what sounds like multiple explosions or gunshots, we hear the sound of a dog yelping sharply, as if in pain.
We then hear several more gunshots or explosions amid the general pandemonium.
The camera follows the heavily armed and armored officers inside. We watch as they order a woman and a small child, still woozy from being suddenly awakened, into their living room.
As they are forced onto the floor, a young male is brought into the room. He is handcuffed and pushed against a wall.
"What did I do? What did I DO?" he shouts, as the woman and the child cower on the floor nearby.
We then learn the source of the dog's pained cries.
"You shot my dog, you shot my DOG!" the man suddenly shouts. "Why did you do that? He was a good dog! He was probably trying to play with you!"
He, the woman and the child all break into pitiful sobs.
As of late October, just five months after it was posted, the Columbia police raid video has been viewed nearly two million times on YouTube. The clip quickly ricocheted across cyberspace, generating emotionally charged, outraged calls for the officers to be fired and prosecuted. Or subjected to the same kind of treatment that terrorized their fellow citizens.
Public indignation over the incident intensified when it was learned that the Columbia SWAT team was executing an eight-day-old search warrant, and that the only things seized were a pipe containing a small amount of marijuana residue. Since possession of small amounts of pot had long ago been essentially decriminalized in Columbia, the man was charged with simple possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor.
The reaction of Fox Business Network's Andrew Napolitano was telling. In a segment about the raid that also found its way onto YouTube, the retired New Jersey Superior Court judge says, "This was America -- not East Germany, not Nazi Germany, but middle America!"
Yet as former Cato staffer Radley Balko, who wrote about the Columbia video, has noted, what's most remarkable about the raid is that it wasn't remarkable at all. The only thing that made it unusual was that it was videotaped and made public, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Columbia Daily Tribune newspaper.
There are more than 50,000 police paramilitary raids in the United States each year -- more than 130 every day. Virtually all are for prosecution of drug warrants, the vast majority involving marijuana. Many jurisdictions use SWAT teams for execution of every search warrant for drugs.
Just like in Columbia, these drug raids are typically staged in the middle of the night by officers equipped similarly to those depicted in the video: Darth Vader-style Kevlar helmets and body armor, black uniforms, military boots, night vision goggles. The officers are armed with automatic weapons and are sometimes deployed from armored personnel carriers or rappelling from helicopters. Doors are smashed open with battering rams or are ripped from their hinges by ropes tied to vehicles. And, to further disorient those inside, officers are trained to use explosives -- "flash-bang" grenades -- upon entry. The slightest provocation, including any "furtive" moments on the part of the residents, often results in shots fired.
Since drug dealers sometimes use dogs to protect their stash, family pets are shot, kicked, or, in the recent case of a New York City raid, thrown out the window.
At least in Columbia, no human was injured or killed in the crossfire, and (unlike dozens of cases every year across the country), the SWAT team got the address right -- even if the huge stash of drugs and money they thought they'd discover was nowhere to be found.
How did local police departments in a free society ever reach this point?
Nixon's use of the word "War" was no accident. From the outset, Washington's approach to the problems of drug use and addiction has been overtly militaristic in nature.
"It's a funny war when the 'enemy' is entitled to due process of law and a fair trial," the nation's first "Drug Czar," William Bennett, told Fortune magazine. Never known for moderation, he later famously urged repeal of habeas corpus in drug cases and even went on to recommend public beheading of drug dealers.
The federal government has instituted policies that have encouraged local law enforcement agencies to increasingly blur the roles of soldiers and police.
SWAT, a specialized paramilitary force used in especially dangerous situations -- think armed robberies, barricaded suspects, hostages, the Columbine school shootings -- had been in existence before the drug war. But today, their mission is almost exclusively the execution of search warrants in drug cases.
Criminologists Peter Kraska and Louis Cubellis have documented that, as of 1997, 90 percent of American cities with populations of greater than 50,000 had at least one paramilitary or SWAT unit, twice as many as the decade before.
In the post-9/11 era, paramilitary police units have been formed in such unlikely places as Butler, Missouri (population 4,201); Mt. Orab, Ohio (2,701) and Middleburg, Pennsylvania (1,363). Even college campuses like the University of Central Florida have their own campus police SWAT units, operating independently from state and local police departments or civil authorities.
The federal government has given local SWAT units access to highly sophisticated equipment, encouraging its use in an ever-more aggressive War on Drugs.
Beginning with the Military Cooperation and Law Enforcement Act of 1981, the Pentagon gave local and state police access to surplus military equipment for purposes of drug interdiction. By 1997, local police departments around the country had stockpiled 1.2 million pieces of gear, including thousands of military-style M-16 automatic rifles, body armor, helmets, grenade launchers, night vision goggles, even armored personnel carriers and helicopters.
But the military equipment transfers to local police for drug enforcement were just the first step in Washington's intensification of the drug war.
Throughout the 1980s, Congress and the White House together eagerly chipped away at the Civil War-era Posse Comitatus Act, which for more than a century had forbidden use of the military for civilian law enforcement purposes.
Following Ronald Reagan's 1986 National Security Directive declaring drugs a threat to national security, Congress ordered the National Guard to aid state drug enforcement efforts. The effect has been to order the American military to search for marijuana plants.
By 2000, as the Cato Institute's Diane Cecilia Weber documented, Posse Comitatus had been all but repealed with respect to drug interdiction. The first President Bush went so far as to institute a program of "regional task forces" to facilitate civilian-military cooperation in areas of intelligence sharing, equipment transfers, and training of local police in advanced military assault tactics.
A police officer's job is to preserve the peace, to maintain public order on the streets of America's cities. A soldier's job is to fight wars on foreign soil. These are two profoundly different roles.
Tragically, the gradual evolution of local law enforcement into paramilitary units has, over a generation, dramatically changed the culture of police work--in ways the public increasingly and justifiably, finds objectionable.
The shock-and-awe drug enforcement tactics now employed almost a thousand times each week have needlessly injected a high risk of violence into the prosecution of what are almost always non-violent, consensual crimes.
For the innocent bystanders who get caught up in them, the paramilitary raids impose a traumatic and lasting punishment where none is justified. Even for the perpetrators, the raids constitute a reversal of the presumption of innocence (and, as evidenced so vividly by the Columbia raid, a grotesquely disproportionate response to a minor -- or non-existent -- offense).
Fortunately, we are moving closer and closer to a tipping point in the effort to restore sanity to our drug laws and enforcement priorities.
For the first time since Gallup began tracking the issue 41 years ago, fully half of Americans now support legalization of marijuana, with the issue now receiving actual majority support (55 percent) on the west coast.
The changing public attitudes toward marijuana bode well for marijuana policy reform initiatives now being circulated in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Ohio and Washington State, and for legislation now pending in several state houses to allow medicinal use.
More and more Americans are coming to realize the staggering human toll -- in lives, dollars, and civil liberties -- of the drug war. Some of these awakening Americans are police officers--a rapidly growing minority of cops who realize the harm these tactics have done to the people they've been hired to serve, the risks to their own safety and wellbeing, and the erosion of public confidence and respect for law enforcement this policy has caused.
We owe it to ourselves, and to those whose job is to help make our neighborhoods safe, to put an end to the drug war.

An angry Court gives New Orleans prosecutors a scolding An angry Court gives New Orleans prosecutors a scolding

2011-11-14T06:20:00.000-05:00

The state has an obligation to turn over all evidence to the defense. This case highlights how important it is that a prosecutor not attempt to give only 'material' evidence. As a defense lawyer it is imperative that all evidence be obtained.

An angry Court gives New Orleans prosecutors a scolding

Tony Mauro Contact All Articles

The National Law Journal

November 08, 2011

Williams & Connolly's Kannon Shanmugam

The Supreme Court took the New Orleans prosecutor's office to the woodshed on Tuesday, scolding its lawyer for what one justice said was a long history of accusations that the office has ignored the right of defendants to receive exculpatory evidence before trial.

Justice after justice, including conservative Antonin Scalia, admonished Assistant District Attorney Donna Andrieu for her office's failure, in the case before the Court, to turn over what they viewed as evidence that could have changed the course of the trial. "Surely it should have been turned over," Scalia said at one point. "Why don't you give that up?"

The setting for the Court's unusual display of anger was the oral argument in Smith v. Cain, a challenge to prosecutorial misconduct in the case of Juan Smith, convicted of murder in a 1995 rampage that left five people dead. Lawyers for Smith are asking for a new trial, citing statements that were withheld from defense lawyers impeaching the credibility of the only eyewitness to the crime.

The Court agreed in June to hear the case, even though it did not involve a new legal issue or a doctrinal split among circuits. This led to speculation – borne out Tuesday — that the justices docketed the Smith case to continue their scrutiny of the New Orleans prosecutor's office in the aftermath of last term's high court decision in Connick v. Thompson. That controversial 5-4 ruling reversed a $14 million civil rights judgment against the New Orleans prosecutor's office for similar withholding of evidence during the tenure of former prosecutor Harry Connick Sr.

Connick had also prosecuted Smith, and justices made it clear Tuesday that the win last term did not mean they were happy with Connick's legacy. The father of the famed musician, Connick served as New Orleans Parish prosecutor from 1973 to 2003.

Kannon Shanmugam of Williams & Connolly argued on behalf of Smith, forcefully laying out what he described as the prosecutor's "flagrant disregard" of his obligations under Brady v. Maryland, the 1963 ruling that requires prosecutors to supply defense lawyers with exculpatory evidence.

Shanmugam said the defense at trial was not given documents showing that the main eyewitness to the murders had told police more than once that he could not identify those responsible for the murders. The witness identified Smith in a photo lineup only after seeing Smith's picture in a New Orleans newspaper speculating about his connection to the case. "None of this material was handed over," Shanmugam told the Court.

From the moment she stood to answer Shanmugam's arguments, Andrieu was on the defensive. She made her situation worse by insisting through most of her half-hour that the evidence that her office had not turned over was not Brady material that had to be given to the defense – even though it could have been used to cast doubt on the prosecution's main witness. She said it was not material and would not have changed the outcome of the case if it had been revealed to the defense.

"How could it not be material?" asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "Here is the only eyewitness, and we have inconsistent statements."

Justice Anthony Kennedy added, "I just can't believe that."

Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. also piled on, telling Andrieu, "If you were the defense lawyer, you would really like to have that statement where he said, 'I couldn't identify them.'"

Andrieu finally relented to the pressure, allowing that "a prudent prosecutor could have disclosed" the conflicting evidence to the defense. "I believe we were tacking a little bit too close to the wind."

But that concession did not mollify the Court. Justice Elena Kagan bluntly asked, "Did your office ever consider just confessing error in this case? You've had a bunch of time to think about it."

Taken aback, Andrieu said no, asserting she still had a plausible argument that the evidence her office withheld was not material to the case.

Then it was Justice Sonia Sotomayor's turn to scold Andrieu. "There have been serious accusations against the practices of your office, not yours in particular but prior ones," she said. "It is disconcerting to me that when I asked you the question directly, 'should this material have been turned over,' you gave an absolute no. 'It didn't need to be. It would have been prudent, but it didn't need to be.' That's really troubling."

Andrieu's next position was that she had misunderstood Sotomayor's question. "Today we turn all of this over," she said, just as the red light went on, signifying the merciful end of her argument time.

2011-11-11T09:36:00.000-05:00

Another article on the war against Medical Marijuana. There have been countless stories about prescription opiate abuse leading to illicit heroin use. How many stories are there about medical marijuana use leading to more "intense" illegal drug use? Perhaps marijuana isn't the gateway drug that Americans were led to believe it was?

I have represented criminal defendants for over 15 years. In that time, I cannot recall a single client accused of violent behavior while under the sole influence of marijuana. How many Court cases have there been in Coos and Grafton County about addicts committing burglaries to support their drug habit? A large number of those cases are referred to Drug Court. You would be hard-pressed to find any of those cases involving solely marijuana addiction.

Public Enemy No. 1

Robert Koehler

Syndicated writer

Huffington Post

Posted: 11/10/11 10:12 AM ET

"Play faster!" he cried, wildly, over and over. "Play faster!"
The dame who was tickling the ivories complied, out of control herself. The music revved to a dangerous velocity -- oh, too fast for decent, sober, well-behaved Americans to bear -- and... well, you just knew, violence, madness, laughter were just around the corner. The year was 1936 and, oh my God, they were high on marijuana, public enemy number one.
The scene is from Reefer Madness, arguably the dumbest movie ever made -- but smugly at the emotional and ideological core of American drug policy for the last three-quarters of a century. The policy, which morphed in 1970 into an all-out "war" on drugs, has filled our prisons to bursting, created powerful criminal enterprises, launched a real war in Mexico and presided over the skyrocketing of recreational drug use in the United States. The war on drugs just may be a bigger disaster than the war on terror.
"The war on drugs, as it has been waged, has not only failed to curtail drug use; it has become a major public health liability in its own right," writes Christopher Glenn Fichtner in his comprehensive new book on our disastrous war on a plant, Cannabinomics: The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point (Well Mind Books).
Fichtner, a psychiatrist -- he served as Illinois Director of Mental Health for several years -- takes a long, hard look at the politics of irrationality and lays out a compelling diagnosis: "essentially, social or mass psychosis." You can also throw in racism. The war on drugs is simply a race war by another name, fueled by fear of Mexican and African American culture, with the weight of law brought down on African Americans with wildly disproportionate severity:
"... during a period when the number of prison sentences for drug-related convictions increased dramatically for all drug offenders," Fichtner writes, citing Illinois statistics between 1983 and 2002, "it increased for African Americans at roughly eight times the rate of increase seen for Caucasians."
But reading Cannabinomics kept leaving me with the sense that there was a deeper irrationality to our anti-marijuana crusade than even the racism. For instance, "Examples abound," he writes, "in which the application of mandatory minimum sentences has led to harsher penalties for marijuana offenses than for violent crimes ranging from battery through sexual assault and even to murder."
And the violent enforcement of zero tolerance hasn't been limited to the pursuit of recreational potheads. Those using cannabis medicinally have also been harassed, arrested and sometimes treated with such shocking violence you have to wonder whether the official paranoia about marijuana use -- that it leads to mental derangement and violent behavior -- is sheer projection.
For instance, early in the book Fichtner relates the story of Garry, a California man who used marijuana to relieve arthritic pain. Despite the fact that this was legal under state law, his house was raided by federal agents: "As he opened his front door, he was greeted by a battering ram and a physical takedown maneuver that left him with a dislocated left shoulder, right hand fractures, blunt head trauma, and a back injury that aggravated the arthritis for which he grew cannabis in his garage in the first place."
Much of Cannabinomics is devoted to the extraordinary medicinal uses of marijuana, which has been called one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to the human race. It has been used, usually with little if any side effect, to alleviate chronic pain and chemo-induced nausea and relieve the symptoms of a stunning array of illnesses and conditions, including epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, cerebral palsy, diabetes, hepatitis C, AIDS, cancer, Tourette's syndrome, Alzheimer's. The list goes on.
The herb has been "part of humanity's medicine chest for almost as long as history has been recorded," according to Dr. Gregory T. Carter, writing on the NORML website.
In light of this, our war against it -- at extraordinary human and economic cost -- illuminates a crying need for us to change the way we govern and look after ourselves. Another story Fichtner tells is about an Illinois man named Seth, who had suffered from epileptic seizures most of his life. He reluctantly tried using marijuana -- one inhalation a day -- because his prescribed medications weren't helping much, and soon reduced the incidence of grand mal seizures from several per week to one or two per month.
The amazing part of this story, Fichtner notes, is that none of his doctors were willing even to discuss the therapeutic use of marijuana, though they were quick to recommend invasive procedures, including temporal lobe surgery. "... We Americans," he writes, "live in a society in which it is acceptable practice for surgeons to destroy a piece of someone's brain in order to prevent seizures but where use of marijuana for the same purpose... is a criminal offense."
To my mind, it all smacks of the military-industrial metaphor that rules the American roost. We're quick to seize on something as the enemy and organize ourselves blindly around its destruction, never stopping to notice that what we're destroying is ourselves. In the case of the war on drugs, our "enemy" is our greatest ally.
- - -
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, contributor to One World, Many Peaces and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.
© 2011 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Former Narcotics Detective Admits Drug Planting Common | Truthout

2011-11-10T08:56:00.001-05:00

It seems there have been several articles similar to this in recent months. Possession of drugs such as cocaine or heroin, even in small amounts, carry very large penalties in New Hampshire, particularly in the northern tier of the State. If you have been arrested and charged with drug possession, call Attorney Harden today at 603-788-2080.

Former Narcotics Detective Admits Drug Planting Common | Truthout

The Medical Marijuana War

2011-11-09T16:40:00.001-05:00

An interesting article found in the NY Times. The ongoing seizures are a large step back for the medical marijuana community. I will be attending the NORML conference next month and am eager to hear the presenter's opinions.

Reefer Madness

By ETHAN NADELMANN

Published: November 6, 2011 , NY Times

MARIJUANA is now legal under state law for medical purposes in 16 states and the District of Columbia, encompassing nearly one-third of the American population. More than 1,000 dispensaries provide medical marijuana; many are well regulated by state and local law and pay substantial taxes. But though more than 70 percent of Americans support legalizing medical marijuana, any use of marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

When he ran for president, Barack Obama defended the medical use of marijuana and said that he would not use Justice Department resources to override state laws on the issue. He appeared to make good on this commitment in October 2009, when the Justice Department directed federal prosecutors not to focus their efforts on “individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.”
But over the past year, federal authorities appear to have done everything in their power to undermine state and local regulation of medical marijuana and to create uncertainty, fear and confusion among those in the industry. The president needs to reassert himself to ensure that his original policy is implemented.
The Treasury Department has forced banks to close accounts of medical marijuana businesses operating legally under state law. The Internal Revenue Service has required dispensary owners to pay punitive taxes required of no other businesses. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recently ruled that state-sanctioned medical marijuana patients can not purchase firearms.
United States attorneys have also sent letters to local officials, coinciding with the adoption or implementation of state medical marijuana regulatory legislation, stressing their authority to prosecute all marijuana offenses. Prosecutors have threatened to seize the property of landlords and put them behind bars for renting to marijuana dispensaries. The United States attorney in San Diego, Laura E. Duffy, has promised to start targeting media outlets that run dispensaries’ ads.
President Obama has not publicly announced a shift in his views on medical marijuana, but his administration seems to be declaring one by fiat. The head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Michele M. Leonhart, a Bush appointee re-nominated by Mr. Obama, has exercised her discretionary authority to retain marijuana’s classification as a Schedule I drug with “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” And the pronouncements on marijuana, medical and otherwise, from Mr. Obama’s top drug policy adviser, R. Gil Kerlikowske, have been indistinguishable from those of Mr. Bush’s.
None of this makes any sense in terms of public safety, health or fiscal policy. Apart from its value to patients, medical marijuana plays an increasingly important role in local economies, transforming previously illegal jobs into legal ones and creating many new jobs as well, contributing to local tax bases and stimulating new economic activity. Federal crackdowns will not stop the trade in marijuana; they will only push it back underground and hurt those patients least able to navigate illicit markets.
Perhaps not since the civil rights era has law enforcement played such an aggressive role in what is essentially a cultural and political struggle. But this time the federal government is playing the bully, riding roughshod over states’ rights, not to protect vulnerable individuals but to harm them.
At the federal level, there have been few voices of protest. Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill shy away from speaking out. Republicans mostly ignore the extent to which anti-marijuana zealotry threatens core conservative values like states rights, property rights and gun ownership.
Mr. Obama briefly showed a willingness to challenge the drug-war mind-set that permeates the federal drug-control establishment. He needs to show leadership and intervene now, to encourage and defend responsible state and local regulation of medical marijuana.

Ethan Nadelmann is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on November 7, 2011, on page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Reefer Madness.

Finding a Criminal Defense Attorney familiar with the "North Country"

2011-11-09T16:29:00.003-05:00

It seems like there are countless attorney's advertising their services all over the State. What if you are looking for a lawyer that is familiar with the Colebrook or Berlin District Court? How many of these attorneys regularly appear for trial in the North Country? It is important that you interview your lawyer before hiring him or her. When is the last time they have appeared in a particular Court?

Len Harden has practiced law in Northern New Hampshire for over 15 years. Attorney Harden and his family are active in the local communities and have deep roots in the North Country. He regularly represents criminal defendants in Colebrook, Berlin and Lancaster Courts.

Attorney Harden has recognized that the northern tier of New Hampshire is quite large and that it is difficult for people to travel to his main office in Lancaster. To accommodate his clients, Len has opened additional offices in Littleton and Lebanon to assist those in Grafton County as well. If you have a criminal matter pending in Lebanon, Plymouth, Haverhill or Littleton Courts, Attorney Harden is ready to assist you. He is available 24 hours a day and offers a free consultation. Visit our website to learn more:

Harden Law Offices

Harden Law Offices Intro

2011-11-09T12:16:00.000-05:00