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Date: 10 Dec 1999 11:32:58 -0500
From: "Frontline" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Subject: Frontline Bulletin-12/10/99
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While the war on drugs has been a familiar news story for years, FRONTLINE
investigates this coming Tuesday, December 14, a disturbing and
underreported corner of that war: the use of snitches.
Snitching on someone has become the only way for defendants in drug cases to
reduce mandatory minimum sentences which were legislated in the 1980s. In
the last five years almost a third of defendants in federal drug trafficking
cases had prison terms reduced because they informed on others In many
cases, the person implicated by the snitches was barely involved, if at all,
in the actual drug deal.
This FRONTLINE encore broadcast profiles several unsettling cases. For
example, Clarence Aaron,
(http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/snitch/cases/aaron.html) a
college student and athlete with no prior police record was given a life
sentence for drug trafficking--the penalty designed for a drug kingpin. The
amount of drugs in evidence against him: none. The amount of other material
evidence: none. On testimony alone, Clarence was sentenced to three
consecutive life terms. The witnesses were his childhood friends, all drug
dealers with prior police records, all facing life in prison, whose
testimonies earned them big sentence reductions.
The program's web site (http://www.pbs.org/frontline/shows/snitch) offers
much more:
- a 'behind the film' interview with producer Ofra Bikel;
- two fascinating interviews
(http://www.pbs.org/frontline/shows/snitch/etc/inside.html) with informants
who talk about what they did and why
- interviews (http://www.pbs.org/frontline/shows/snitch/procon/) with
defenders and critics of the current system
- a report on a case (http://www.pbs.org/frontline/shows/snitch/end/) which
challenged government leniency deals;
- a primer (http://www.pbs.org/frontline/shows/snitch/primer)on how
mandatory minimum sentences helped escalate the use of snitches by the
government.
Don't miss "Snitch" -- Tuesday, December 14 at 10 PM (please check your
local TV listings).
* - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - *
Macrocosm USA, a nonprofit clearinghouse for progressives
Box 185 -*- Cambria, CA 93428 -*- (805) 927-2515
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"It is [free] market fundamentalism that has rendered the
global capitalist system unsound and unsustainable...market
fundamentalism is today a greater threat to open society than
any totalitarian ideology."
-- George Soros, legendary billionaire Wall Street marketeer
from "The Crisis of Global Capitalism, Open Society
Endangered", 1998
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