Amanda Marcotte has a wonderful article up at Pandagon about the writers of the HBO series The Wire's take on the war on drugs. She quoted from the article in Time Magazine, and I'm reprinting the quote here:
But this is what we can do — and what we will do.
If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun’s manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.
Jury nullification is American dissent, as old and as heralded as the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger, who was acquitted of seditious libel against the royal governor of New York, and absent a government capable of repairing injustices, it is legitimate protest. If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren’t fictional.
Jury nullifcation is simply the act of voting for acquittal when a person is being tried on an unjust charge. Now, my profession almost guarantees that I will never be chosen to serve on a criminal drug charge (you're a social worker? And you work with homeless people? And volunteer as an addictions counselor? No thanks.) No prosecuting attorney in the US would allow me to serve on a criminal jury for a drug charge.
However, I can and am now encouraging people who read this who might actually be in a position to do it some day to use jury nullification as an act of civil disobedience to help bring an end to this unworkable, unjust war on (some classes of people who use some) drugs. Recreational users are committing victimless crimes, so why are they being charged? And yes, people who deal drugs are spreading the disease, but addiction is a disease, not a criminal matter, and should be dealt with medically, not in the criminal courts.
Our drug policy in the US has led directly to the long term homelessness of several of my clients. Keep in mind that the vast majority of convictions I'm referring to are for possession, not for sales. Though bright, some can't get student loans, because they have drug convictions. Though homeless (often for several years or even over a decade) they can't get subsidized housing (except in one extremely small and difficult to get into program) and therefore cannot get housed. Though in some cases clean for years or even decades, they can't get certain classes of jobs, even jobs where there is limited contact with the public and limited access to items worth stealing, because they have felonies.
In the case of black men, I could easily name more than a dozen regular visitors to the center that job hunt every day, that work day labor whenever they can get a ticket, who cannot get permanent jobs and therefore housing despite years of job searching. Conveniently, the government considers these men employed because of their day labor jobs and therefore they are not included in official unemployment numbers.
Some people with addictions, despite multiple attempts at rehab, continue to use and to deal because they simply can't see any way to go legit, given the barriers in front of them.
Yeah, a little civil disobedience is called for. Try it.
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