-Caveat Lector- Via http://www.sacbee.com/voices/national/buckley/ Perjury everywhere? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ <Picture>By William Buckley Published Jan. 22, 1999 A week before the Senate deliberated what exactly the term perjury meant, "Frontline," on PBS, ran a documentary ("Snitch") on informants. An important player in it was lawyer Eric Sterling, a very angry man who is president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. Mr. Sterling maintains that, in some circles, perjury is the "coin of the realm"; that perjury goes on, is known by prosecutors to be going on, as also by trial judges who protect themselves with ritual disclaimers. It is, of course, a standard technique of advocacy to attempt to discredit the witness -- the informant, in the "Snitch" documentary. If in this endeavor you do not succeed, then invite the jury to stall over the conundrum, before declaring guilt or innocence. What do you do when there is a division of opinion? Last Wednesday's defense advocate in the Senate, Gregory Craig, said to the senators that the president couldn't be held perjurious in having sworn under oath that this is what he and Monica actually did, for the simple reason that though she said something else, it boiled down to her having said one thing about what they did together, he something else; so it's just a he-said she-said quandary. Eric Sterling is talking about what he persuasively denounces as a national scandal, which is the workaday perjury of witnesses in dope-crime prosecutions who are moved to lie by simple concentration on what the prosecutor can do to you if you don't give him what he wants. Here, he tells us, is what goes through the mind of the co-defendant when asked by the prosecutor to denounce his fellow defendant: "Geez, I'm facing 30 years or 50 years in prison. How can I get out? What do I have to do? What do I have to testify to? Who do I have to testify against? I have to say (that the other guy) was a dope dealer? How bad (he'll ask me) do you think this guy is? (I'll say), 'He's real bad.' (He'll) say to me, 'He sold 50 kilos, he was the biggest dealer in town. Is it true?' (I'll say) 'I swear it's true, honest."' It was implied by the president's defense that Monica Lewinsky is suspect as a witness. After all, she was given immunity by the independent counsel, was she not? Did she proceed to do the kind of thing Eric Sterling is talking about, done every day in drug prosecutions? There is an irony here because Sterling was counsel to the House Committee on the Judiciary for 10 years, the Reagan years, and participated in the crafting of the mandatory sentencing law, which law he now classifies as "the greatest tragedy of my professional life." What brought them on was the death from an overdose of drugs of the Boston Celtics' Len Bias in 1986. The death of the basketball hero brought on "an incredible conjunction between politics and hysteria." Tip O'Neill, who was speaker of the House and congressional representative from Cambridge, called the leadership together and said, "I want a drug bill; I want it in four weeks." What then happened, with the participation of Sterling, was what he described as a "stampede." "No hearings, no consideration by the federal judges, no input from the Bureau of Prisons. Even the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) didn't testify. The whole thing is kind of cobbled together with chewing gum and bailing wire." We are reminded of the Clinton advocate's conclusion that the case against the president was made up of "prosecutorial fudge." Eric Sterling is very eloquent with his complaint. He reminds us that at the time the mandatory sentencing law was written, there were 30,000 federal prisoners. The figure is now 100,000. He wishes us to believe that many of these are there because the law makes a 10-year mountain out of a 2-ounce marijuana molehill. He is certainly persuasive in pleading the extraordinary severity of current sentencing. The day before Mr. Craig pleaded Clinton's case, the Supreme Court upheld a 25-years-to-life sentence against a convicted Californian who had stolen a $20 bottle of vitamins. He was now a victim of the three-times-and-you're-out law, theoretically appealing, but sometimes grotesque in its application. What those who protest the severity of mandatory sentencing for drugs need to do is to confront the enticing correlation between the great reduction in crime in the past few years and the longevity of prison sentences. Those of us who are on record as rejecting the war on drugs have contended that the reason for most drug crime is the profitability of merchandising drugs, which would not be the case if drugs were available to addicts at the cost of manufacture (2 percent of street price). If it is true that perjury is wholesale because of self-defense against egregious prison sentences, that is something Congress should get around to investigating, after it is done with Clinton. Write to William Buckley at Universal Press Syndicate: 4520 Main St., Kansas City, Mo. 64111. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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