...Please note that this action I've taken was a personal
decision, not an organizational policy of DRCNet, though
the organization is publicizing it.  Also, in case you were
wondering, Judge King is indeed the son of our movement's
Rufus King, the great pioneer of drug reform.  (Visit
http://www.druglibrary.org/special/king/rufusking.htm to
read some of his extensive works and other items
contributed from his private collection.)  That is only a
coincidence, though; I addressed my letter to Judge King
simply because he is the Chief Judge and his name therefore
appeared on my jury summons.  Lastly, my letter is a
critique of the system, not of Judge King, of whom I have
heard only good things.

Here is the letter:

-----------------------------------------------------------

8/22/03

The Honorable Rufus G. King III
Chief Judge
Superior Court of the District of Columbia
Moultrie Courthouse
500 Indiana Ave., NW, Room 3500
Washington, DC 20001

Re:  Jury Summons, August 25, 2003, JIN # 559075

Dear Judge King:

I write you from a different corner of the world of law
than the one you oversee for the District of Columbia: the
community of advocates striving to change laws and
policies.  For the past ten years, I have worked as founder
and executive director of StopTheDrugWar.org: the Drug
Reform Coordination Network (DRCNet), an organization which
calls for an end to prohibition and the so-called "war on
drugs."

It is with sadness for our country, but hope for its
future, that I write to inform you that conscience does not
permit me to appear for jury service as your court has
directed.

US drug policy is in a state of moral and humanitarian
crisis, shaming us before history:  Half a million
nonviolent drug offenders clog our prisons and jails. 
Mandatory minimum sentences and inflexible sentencing
guidelines condemn numerous low-level offenders to years or
decades behind bars, often based solely on the word of
compensated, confidential informants.  Profiling and other
racial or economic disparities assault the dignity and
safety of our poor and minorities and deny them equal
justice.  Overall, criminalization has become a reflexive,
default reaction to social problems, as opposed to its more
limited, proper role as a last resort after other methods
have failed.  As a result, more than two million people are
imprisoned in the United States, the highest incarceration
rate of any nation.

The external consequences of the drug laws wreak a
devastating toll on large segments of our society and on
other countries:  Prohibition creates a lucrative black
market that soaks our inner cities in violence and
disorder, and lures young people into lives of crime.  Laws
criminalizing syringe possession, and the overall milieu of
underground drug use and sales, encourage needle sharing
and increase the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C.  Our drug
war in the Andes fuels a continuing civil war in Colombia,
with prohibition-generated illicit drug profits enabling
its escalation.  Thousands of Americans die from drug
overdoses or poisonings by adulterants every year, most of
their deaths preventable through the quality-controlled
market that would exist if drugs were legal.  Physicians'
justifiable fear of running afoul of law enforcers causes
large numbers of Americans to go un- or under-treated for
intractable chronic pain.  And frustration over the failure
of the drug war, together with the lack of dialogue on
prohibition, distorts the policymaking process, leading to
ever more intrusive governmental interventions and ever
greater dilution of the core American values of freedom,
privacy and fairness.
 
Drug policies have significantly driven a deep corrosion of
the ethics and principles underlying our system of justice: 
Police officers routinely violate constitutional rights to
make drug busts, often committing perjury to secure
convictions; or resort to trickery and manipulation to
cause individuals to give up their rights, enabled by an
intricate web of legalistic court rulings stretching the
letter of the law while betraying its spirit.  Manipulation
of evidence and process is standard procedure.  Many
prosecutors, though thankfully not all, treat their
position as a stepping stone to elected office, subjugating
their oaths to seek justice to a political calculus based
instead on individual career advancement.  Corruption and
misconduct among enforcers and within agencies is
widespread.  And all these problems, while not officially
sanctioned, are in practice largely tolerated: criminal
prosecution for police abuse is the exception, and
disbarment for prosecutorial misconduct is almost unheard
of.  Meanwhile, false or unfair convictions occur with
unacknowledged frequency, with persons thus victimized
often spending years in prison while seeking exoneration.

Jurors in the United States cannot therefore confidently
rely on the information we are provided for deciding
criminal cases.  We cannot know if we have been told the
whole truth of a case ­ as in the trials of Ed Rosenthal
and Bryan Epis, whom California jurors convicted without
knowing they were medical marijuana providers.  We cannot
trust the testimony of witnesses for the state to be
truthful and balanced; for example, Andrew Chambers, a
"super-snitch" used by the US Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) for numerous prosecutions, even after
a court found him to be a repeat perjurer.  We are not
permitted knowledge of the possible consequences a
defendant may face if we vote to convict ­ and in a society
that hands out decades-long punishments as a routine
matter, and which fails to provide adequate safety or
medical care to our incarcerated, we cannot have faith that
a judge will be able, even if willing, to pronounce a
sentence that is just.  We are instructed to decide
verdicts based solely on facts, showing no consideration to
larger moral principles, with those daring to inform
potential jurors of their power to do otherwise themselves
subjected to criminalization to an increasing degree.  And
we subsidize the injustices by providing our time for mere
travel cost as members of the jury pool, and for less than
a living wage while serving as jurors on cases.

We in the District of Columbia have attempted multiple
times to effect modest changes to our drug policy, only to
have our voices rebuffed or silenced.  A voter initiative
to permit medical use of marijuana, Measure 63, was struck
from our ballot by Congress; and an initiative to divert a
limited class of offenders from jail into treatment,
Measure 62, which the electorate of the District approved
overwhelmingly, was blocked from being implemented by a
court, in a proceeding initiated at the behest of our own
Mayor.  Despite a significant degree of reform sentiment
among District residents, our criminal justice policies
largely parallel the unceasing arrest and incarceration
program of the nation as a whole.  Indeed, our justice
system is heavily influenced by a Congress that makes use
of our taxes but affords us no voting representation within
its ranks, and by a federal enforcement bureaucracy which
this Congress funds and to which it has granted substantial
authority over our local criminal justice matters.

None of the foregoing is intended to reflect any
condemnation or disrespect of your office or profession ­
and no such sentiment is harbored toward the son of Rufus
King II, a great crusader for justice and a member of my
organization.  I take heart from your tenure as well as
from the efforts of the majority of individuals working in
the criminal justice system who strive with integrity to
serve the public weal.  But judges and jurors alike are in
the grip of larger political and social forces; and the
moral obligations of the private citizen vs. the official
duties of the appointed public servant are not always one
and the same.

I do not lightly exclude myself from jury service, which in
a just society I would consider a privilege and honor.  But
while the past ten years have seen some encouraging
developments in drug policy reform, the fundamental
punitive, prohibitionist focus of the government's anti-
drug program remains unchanged, as does the extremity of
its execution and the corrupting toll it takes on the
administration of justice as a whole.  On that latter
concern, I also do not dismiss the need for, or the
validity of, legitimate laws protecting safety and
property, even in the face of injustice in their
administration; the District has a defensible need for
jurors to serve on such cases, and I do not call for that
process to cease or wait.

But the untrustworthiness of the system in its overview, a
result to a significant degree of the drug war, presents
potential jurors with a moral dilemma whose resolution lies
beyond their power: to serve, at least on cases involving
laws that are just in and of themselves, but risking
committing wrong by enabling the system to commit an
injustice that they cannot reliably identify in advance (a
significant possibility for any juror in the current state
of affairs), and in any case still facilitating injustice
indirectly by enlarging the total size of the available
juror pool; or to commit a different wrong by refusing to
serve even on cases involving such laws (the system's
overall unreliability being a valid justification for such
refusal in and of itself), but continuing to receive the
benefits of the protection which those laws provide.

It may be that the lesser wrong, and the greater good, lie
in refusing to serve a corrupted system entirely, in hopes
of, through such a choice, provoking needed discussion and
increasing the public and political will for reform.  As
the great American philosopher and abolitionist, Henry
David Thoreau, expounded in his famous essay Civil
Disobedience, "It is not a man's duty, as a matter of
course, to devote himself to the eradication of... even the
most enormous wrong... but it is his duty, at least, to
wash his hands of it, and, if he give it no thought longer,
not to give it practically his support."

My service as a juror in the District of Columbia would
directly or indirectly support injustice, and would help to
fuel the illusion that drug prohibition serves the health
and safety of the public; when in reality only some form of
legalization can adequately address the combined harms of
drugs and drug prohibition, which in the currently one-
dimensional public dialogue are commonly attributed only to
drugs; and when in reality only some form of legalization
can satisfy the fundamental obligation of society to
respect individual freedom while requiring individual
responsibility.

Lastly, should I report to your court as a potential juror,
it is an all but foregone conclusion that my profession,
which was asked of me on the juror registration form, would
cause me not to be selected for a jury, as has happened in
the past.  Those of us who place greater importance on
conscience and individual justice than on the enactments of
legislatures, and who do so outspokenly, are effectively
disenfranchised from jury service for this reason.  For me
to report as a potential juror, then, would amount to
participation in a game, devaluing both the system you
administer and the principles to which I ascribe.

For all these reasons, I have determined that unjust drug
laws, and the corrosion wrought by the drug war on the
criminal justice system as a whole, compel me to
conscientiously refuse jury service.  I take this action
with knowledge and acceptance of the possible consequences,
and request no special consideration.

Respectfully,


David Borden, Executive Director, DRCNet/StopTheDrugWar.org
and citizen of the District of Columbia

Cc:  Duane B. Delaney, Clerk of the Court

 

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