The Reeking Soul of US Justice

The Reeking Soul of US Justice; brief Comments by Alex DeLuca, Pain Relief Network, regarding “From My Cell I Scent the Reeking Soul of US Justice” by Conrad Black, OpEd article, Sunday Times (UK), 2008-11-23. Source: MAP

Permalink: http://doctordeluca.com/wordpress/archive/reeking-soul-justice/
See also:
Dr. Naramore Under ‘Investigation’ – Again – DeLuca, 2007

I never heard of Conrad Black until I read the item below in DrugSense Weekly, excerpted below. The legal situation seems to be a mess from this AP news item from June 2008, “Black’s Attorney’s Tell Court his Trial Wasn’t Fair, and one can get a sense of the initial media-prosecution presentation of the case from this very brief 2007 news item. This is a case of alleged embezzlement and fraud, not a drug or pain medicine case.

But Black’s criticisms and description of federal prosecutorial behavior rings true to me from my experience and knowledge of war on docs/pain crisis cases.^{1 2 3 4} Our justice system is withering, ‘the drugs exception to the Bill of Rights’ has gone from being a tragic lawyers joke to business as usual, and we now routinely apply asset forfeiture and RICO laws, intended by Congress to combat drug cartels, to individual pain-treating physicians.

Doctors and sick people are easy, profitable prey for law enforcement and federal prosecutors pandering to the electorate through a media willing to be exploited for their share of the spoils. Meanwhile, the government attempts to cover up massive theft of controlled substances at the pharmacy and wholesale distribution levels having nothing to do with doctors and patients.⁵

And it is the Drug Czar, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)⁶, that orchestrates the cover-up by employing diversionary propaganda, for example this Reducing Prescription Drug Abuse “fact sheet,” which focuses on “data mining” and “prescription monitoring programs” targeted at “doctor-shoppers.” No mention of that wholesale theft they’ve been tracking for years. Who could blame them? Going after doctors and destitute, undertreated pain patients desperately seeking proper treatment from a system that shuns them with the policeman’s approval, is child’s play. There is even a Prescription Drug Diversion Prosecutions – Quick Reference Card 2002 – part of a sort of ‘How To Abuse Justice, Abandon your Professional Ethics, and Get Away With It’ course for government prosecutors, as discussed by Tina Rosenberg in her 2007 NY Times Magazine cover story, When is a Doctor a Drug Pusher?⁷

“Ignore the organized criminals cleaning out warehouses and hijacking trucks operating behind the curtain with our knowledge,” the drug warriors say. “Focus instead on those Bad Doctors and Bad Patients and Bad Drugs.”

Sure it’s primitive, but we keep falling for it so the Drug Czar’s office keeps churning out the spin, and lazy “journalists” of the mainstream press (who couldn’t spell the word “investigative,” apparently) keep serving us the government/law enforcement line as “news.” (Here is a good example of drug war Trash Journalism – the Associated Press coverage of the indictment of Ohio physician Dr. Paul Volkman, 2007, which I discuss in: Dr. Volkman Speaks Against DEA in April – Gets Indicted in May.)

The soul of American justice does reek, and at the core of the rot is a senseless and wasteful ‘war on drugs’ which is increasingly a war on our most vulnerable citizens, especially indigent chronic pain patients and the docs who would treat them with compassion and skill were they not terrified of running afoul of the Prohibition Prison Industrial Complex. A war waged in your name, funded with billions of your tax dollars.⁸

How rich do we collectively feel these days? How much longer will we tolerate this destructive, wasteful bloat that contributes nothing to the care of the sick and disabled among us, but rather erects barriers to access to care, more hoops for sick people to jump through, to the policeman’s satisfaction. (Doctors hold up the hoops, the DEA holds the whip, the patients jump.)

I agree completely with Maia Szalavitz in her 12/1/08 guest blog entry on The BlueMarble, the environment and health blog of MotherJones.com, entitled, Just Say No to Drug Czars, that the ONDCP, an ideologically driven, anti-scientific, wasteful agency that does more public health harm than good, is far worse than useless.

[If] we’re going to be stuck with [a Drug Czar], let’s hire an academic researcher or MD who knows that needle exchange saves lives; methadone works and is over-regulated; addiction treatment needs to be varied, empathetic, and not humiliating to be effective; 12-step programs are not the only way; treatment providers should only be paid to provide treatment proven to be effective; mandatory minimums don’t work, and prison should be reserved for violent criminals.
– Maia Szalavitz ⁹

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From My Cell I Scent the Reeking Soul of US Justice
Conrad Black, OpEd article, Sunday Times (UK), 2008-11-23.
Excerpt:  
I write to you from a US federal prison. It is far from a country club or even a regimental health spa. I work quite hard but fulfillingly, teaching English and the history of the United States to some of my co-residents. There is practically unlimited access to e-mails and the media and plenty of time for visitors.

Many of the other co-residents are quite interesting and affable, often in a Damon Runyon way, and the regime is not uncivilised. In eight months here there has not been the slightest unpleasantness with anyone. It is a little like going back to boarding school, which I somewhat enjoyed nearly 50 years ago ( before being expelled for insubordination ) and is a sharp change of pace after 16 years as chairman of The Daily Telegraph. I can report that a change is not always as good as a rest…

My appeal continues. Given the putrefaction of the US justice system, it is an unsought but distinct honour to fight this out and already to have won 85% of the case and 99% of the financial case. The initial allegation against me of a “$500m corporate kleptocracy” has shrunk to a false finding against me…

**US federal prosecutors, almost all of whom would be disbarred for their antics if they were in Britain or Canada, win more than 90% of their cases thanks to the withering of the constitutional guarantees** of due process that is, the grand jury as an assurance against capricious prosecution, no seizure of property without just compensation, access to counsel, an impartial jury, speedy justice and reasonable bail.

We did not know the grand jury was sitting, have never seen the transcript of its proceedings and I was denied counsel of choice by the ex parte seizure… The system is based on the plea bargain: the barefaced exchange of incriminating testimony for immunity or a reduced sentence. It is intimidation and suborned or extorted perjury, an outright rape of any plausible definition of justice.

The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people ( 2.5m ) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences…

Obviously, the bloom is off my long-notorious affection for America…
 

[END]

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