Source: Salt Lake City Weekly (UT) Copyright: 1998 Salt Lake City Weekly Contact: 801 575-8011 Mail: 60 West 400 South, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84101 Website: http://www.slweekly.com/ Author: Ben Fulton, Associate Editor Pubdate: 5 Nov 1998 RETURNING FIRE: How The Case Of A Mexican Immigrant Led Danny Quintana To Declare War On America's "War On Drugs." If you were as poor as Rubalcava, you might have made the same kind of journey. Even if you weren't Rubalcava's defense attorney, as Danny Quintana is, you might be disturbed about the aftermath of it all. A married 24-year-old with two children, Rubalcava's home village in the Agua Caliente province is so impoverished that people there still draw water from a well. His family hungry, and with no prospects in sight, Rubalcava hopped a bus to Tijuana, where he paid $500 for a smuggler's passage into Los Angeles. From there, he relocated to Utah. Between time spent looking for manual labor and restaurant work, Rubalcava met Elmer Rodriguez and three other Mexican nationals at a Salt Lake City gas station. Rubalcava needed a place to sleep. Rodriguez and his pals, who were running an outrageously lucrative drug trade in the Salt Lake Valley, wanted someone to watch and maintain their domicile as they raked in the cash selling heroin, cocaine and meth. Tired and hungry, Rubalcava seemed the perfect house boy. He mowed the lawn, did the dishes, collected mail and newspapers --- all that was needed to make a drug house look like part of the neighborhood. Coming home one evening from the second week of his job search, Rubalcava found a party. Reveling in their success, Rodriguez and friends arranged some $2 million in stacked $100 bills on the kitchen counter. Above that, in the cupboards, were bricks of cocaine, meth and heroin wrapped in wide industrial tape. It was picture time. With a trophy perched on a sea of money, everyone took turns hamming it up for the Polaroid. Elmer, sitting on a stool, posed with a gun down his shorts as piles of drugs stared blankly in the background. Others posed kissing their girlfriends. Rubalcava posed as well, in a photo that would doom his chances before a court. The day after the party, police came crashing through the doors with a warrant, and the sequence of a drug arrest fell headlong like dominoes: the booking, the trials, the sentencing. - --------------- A FOOT SOLDIER IN THE "WAR" If you've always thought undocumented aliens peddling drugs in Salt Lake City were sent back to Mexico only to return like boomerangs, think again: The sheer volume of drugs, not to mention reckless photography, ensured that everyone was about to do hard time — including Rubalcava. His photograph in front of kitchen cupboards stuffed with drugs buttressed government claims that he was part and parcel of Rodriguez's crew. In federal court before Judge Dee V. Benson, and in front of an all-white jury, Rodriguez and his associates were sentenced to 20 years each. Benson, stretching leniency as far as it could go under federal drug sentencing guidelines mandated by Congress, dealt Rubalcava, who spent less than two weeks away from home, 10 years and one month. In a unique strategy, Quintana defended him as a "prisoner of war," a foot soldier in a hostile foreign country. As such, Quintana argued that Rubalcava was entitled to standards of humane treatment under international law and the articles of the Geneva Convention — provisions that supersede federal drug sentencing guidelines. Murderers, rapists and untold legions of white-collar criminals have gotten away with less time than Rubalcava. Quintana, ever eager to make a point, says even convicted Nazi war criminals did less time after the Nuremberg trials. But so it is, thanks to federal mandatory minimums passed by a Congress hell-bent on the "War on Drugs," that Rubalcava sits in federal prison as his case moves through the assembly line of an appeal. If an appeal by Quintana fails before the 10th Circuit Court, Rubalcava's time in prison will cost U.S. taxpayers $31,000 per year for a grand total of $313,000 by the time he steps back into daylight. Meanwhile, his wife and children in Agua Caliente whittle away the decade without a husband or father. - -------------- WALKING OUT OF THE QUAGMIRE Fresh out of law school in 1983, Quintana's first drug case was defending two men against $400 fines each for smoking marijuana in a parking lot. Over the years, Quintana peppered his legal career with a variety of cases, concentrating for a while on employment law. Drug cases never made up more than $15,000 in billing for his firm. In a profession where passion for a client's defense can seem overblown, and suspiciously dramatic, Quintana's carries an air of real urgency, as if forged in a white-hot furnace where reason burns brightly with compassion. His voice, already thick with volume, grows even louder. His eyes become tense with focus. "Defending drug cases reminds me of being an altar boy during the Vietnam War, when I helped bury young men who came back home dead. A light went on in me that said, 'This just doesn't work.' When you see a homeless Mexican from the poorest part of Mexico doing 10 years in federal prison for this, it says something deeply troubling about U.S. drug policy," he says. "When little people find themselves involved in a major conflict like the 'War on Drugs' they need to be protected." Pulling his frustration in line with action, Quintana organized a series of panels driving at the once urgent, but now curiously forgotten, question: "Should we end the War on Drugs?" The panels, four in a series, were hosted at St. Mark's Cathedral, where he serves on the vestry. "If it's in the setting of a church, then it's politically neutral and unbiased, so we can get to the merits of the issue, not the politicization of it," Quintana says. "It's a forum in which we can look at what we're doing to this country with the War on Drugs. Make no mistake, I do not in any way, shape or form advocate the use of these substances. But I think we need to take a step-by-step approach and slowly start walking out of this quagmire." The power of Quintana's POW argument rests on how war is defined, and if it can be proven that the United States is, in fact, at war. Quintana believes we are. Congress hasn't formally declared it, but politicians brandish war-like rhetoric. More importantly, Congress spends millions to finance this war, using the Coast Guard and U.S. military to fight it, plus spy satellites to monitor its activity. Invoking the Geneva Convention may be stretching for a client's defense, but like a chess player who moves for both offensive and defensive purposes, it makes more than one point about our "War on Drugs." In the late '80s and early '90s, sound, educated minds called for the legalization or decriminalization of drugs, asking if America's politicians hadn't learned from the past failure of Prohibition. Put illegal narcotics in the same regulated arena of legal drugs such as tobacco and alcohol, proponents of legalization said, and we will see a decrease in violent crime, organized crime, money-laundering, and save untold truckloads of money. Government quality control of these substances would cut down on deaths from tainted drugs sold on the street, and taxes from drug sales could be used for treatment and education to dissuade use, much like today's school kids are dissuaded from using tobacco. It was a line of reasoning endorsed by such conservative icons as William F. Buckley, and respected publications like The Economist. Even better, concrete results from the trailblazing drug policies of European nations proved the proposition was no fluke. "Extensive experience with decriminalization in Holland shows that not only is there no accompanying surge in consumption — allowing for the inrush of addicts from more restrictive countries — but related crime falls when drugs are legalized," The Economist wrote in a May 1993 house editorial. Persuasive as the argument was, most Americans had trouble with the paradox behind it: To defeat the scourge of drugs we must capitulate to it. To a nation suspicious of leniency, and cast in Puritan, eye-for-an-eye doctrine, that's a hard sell. It also takes money away from those who profit from the "War on Drugs": the corrections industry which builds ever larger prisons for drug offenders, politicians who campaign on "get-tough" rhetoric, bloated federal law enforcement agencies, and defense attorneys who specialize in drug offenses. "Just like the Vietnam War, you have so many people with hands in the till that's it's almost impossible to change directions until we wean all of these contractors and agencies from their dependency on tax dollars that come with the drug trade," Quintana says. Perhaps it's the still vibrant U.S. economy that keeps Americans from dwelling on the costs to fund the "War on Drugs": a $15.2 billion 1997 budget for the National Drug Control Policy to stop the flow of drugs into our boarders; $1.47 billion annually to imprison federal drug law violators; millions in court and legal costs to process convictions; $9.9 billion in law enforcement costs; plus $2.2 billion in other interdiction costs. In fact, one study published by the National Review in July 1995 estimated that, even with $5 billion redirected toward drug treatment and prevention research and education programs, American taxpayers would save $37 billion if the War on Drugs was ended. Until that day, though, the U.S. government will continue to pour vast sums of money into a futile war that builds ever more prisons, diverts the attentions of law enforcement, and actually creates the crime it is pretending to combat. All the while drug treatment, a far more effective means of combating the problem, is left wanting. Even a study prepared specifically for the Office of National Drug Control Policy showed that treatment of addiction is 10 times more effective than interdiction in reducing the use of at least one drug, cocaine. Nevertheless, a paltry 7 percent of the government's drug-control budget is directed toward drug recovery and rehab programs. Far more shocking to Quintana, though, was the human cost of the "War on Drugs." According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 36 percent of all drug law offenders locked in federal prisons are nonviolent violators. With sentences far greater than those convicted of sexual abuse, manslaughter and assault, the grudge these people will feel toward society after release will be large indeed. Add to that federal laws prohibiting drug offenders from government employment, making it extremely difficult for them to earn a legal livelihood, and you have a recipe for social disaster. "If you think we have problems now, wait until these kids who've served 10 to 20 years under mandatory minimums come out," Quintana says. "You are going to see the most angry, vicious animals humanity has ever produced." It could also be argued that the "War on Drugs" produces results that, on their face, are harsher for minorities and people less likely to afford the extravagant expense of a first-rate defense attorney. African-Americans make up 41 percent of the federal prison population, and account for 84 percent of crack-cocaine convictions. Latinos account for 28 percent of the federal prison population, and that number is rising fast. Discounting even all that, Quintana believes the "War on Drugs" is a colossal failure simply because it has failed to stem the tide of drugs into our society. If anything, the "War on Drugs" has made our society more uncivil. The illegality of drugs feeds profit-making, which attracts criminals. As Quintana points out, last year the United Nations estimated that the world drug trade generates some $400 billion in annual profits. No effort, no matter how well-orchestrated, is going to surmount a profit-motive of that size — one that's larger than the world trade in automobiles or textiles. There's also more than a little hypocrisy involved. American tobacco companies are free to ship their addictive, deadly, carcinogenic products worldwide. Less developed nations must ship their opium and cocaine sight unseen. And what about the death toll? Far more Americans die every year in car accidents, or because of poor diet or lack of exercise, than overdoses from illegal drugs. "I wish these substances didn't exist, but they do. And yes, people can die from using them," Quintana says. "I've had family members who've used drugs to the point where they've almost died. But is it any less tragic when a person dies from some other cause? Life has hardships. Life is not easy, and life can be very, very cruel. And all we can do is work together to make sure that it's not so cruel." - --------------- THE ROOT ISSUE The path leading toward 10 and 20-year sentences for drug offenders isn't difficult to trace back. It was 1986 when Len Bias, the 22-year-old basketball star and Boston Celtics draft pick, died of a cocaine-induced heart failure. As a tribute to the fallen hero, Congress passed the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, and mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders were born. President Reagan signed it into law in October of that same year, a week before election day. If politicians and the public loved the bill, few who understood the legal system did. The U.S. Sentencing Commission complained that mandatory minimums recklessly and arbitrarily doled out sentences that rarely fit the severity of the crime. But in a 5-4 decision in 1991, the Supreme Court found that the law did not violate the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Speaking before the University of Chicago Law School, Justice John Paul Stevens continued to voice his opposing vote: "The use of mandatory sentences É are manifestly and grossly disproportionate to the moral guilt of the offenders." Two years later, in 1993, 50 federal judges announced they would no longer hear drug cases. It's a tactic Quintana recommends for defense attorneys as well. "I would recommend that every defense attorney in America stop taking these cases," he says. "If we refuse to defend people charged with drug crimes, then it's going to make it exceedingly difficult to continue this war." Among the participants of Quintana's panel discussions at St. Mark's, comments rarely fell in a straight line of agreement. There was, however, a recurring pattern of thought among the health-care professionals, attorneys, scholars and law enforcement officials who spoke. "In all four panels not one person has suggested that we continue to do what we've been doing in the 'War on Drugs.' Everyone agrees that we need a change of direction," Quintana says. If a second theme has emerged --- albeit, ever so slightly --- it might be the importance of drug addiction treatment and preventive education over the heavy hand of law enforcement and interdiction. In the second panel, "Winners and Losers in the War on Drugs," Odyssey House director Glenn Lambert lamented the fact that people addicted to drugs must sometimes wait up to six months for a space at the recovery center he manages. He's also seen government funding for drug addiction treatment shrink at a time when health insurance companies refuse to pay for the expense. Society needs to rethink not just the "War on Drugs," but the very nature of drug addiction. In an ideal world, addiction would be seen as a health problem — no more, and no less. "Many other health problems have relapses as well, but we seem to get angrier at people who relapse into drugs," Lambert says. "Diabetes has huge consequences on a person's health, but people afflicted with that condition often go against their treatment in a way similar to that of the drug addict. We tend to be a punitive society when it comes to drugs. Instead of treating them we like to punish them." Still, he takes a more moderate view than Quintana's where decriminalization and legalization are concerned. "Few of my drug addicts would argue for the legalization of drugs, mostly because they've seen what it did to their lives," Lambert says. Even Quintana makes one caveat in his crusade: Under no circumstances should methamphetamine ever be legalized. A truly dangerous drug, it induces violent fits and psychosis in the user. In the third panel, "Medical Problems With the 'War on Drugs,'" Dr. Todd Gray, Utah's chief medical examiner, noted that of the 70 homicides in which drugs played a motivating factor last year, 9 could be attributed to the continuing illegal status of drugs. These were homicides involving drug transactions gone sour. "That's actually a lower number than in '95 and '96, when a large amount of business consolidation was going on," Gray notes. "If the economic incentives behind illegal drugs were removed, you wouldn't get those kinds of killings." In the category of drug deaths listed as intentional or unintentional overdoses, Utah saw 80 deaths last year. And therein lies the rub for Quintana and others who want to see drugs decriminalized. No one's sure how much consumption would rise under legalization, and how many people would die, before people started to realize that drug use isn't smart. Then again, no one knows for certain how much drug use could be controlled if the U.S. government spent even half the money on drug education as it does on the construction of prisons. Like Lambert, Gray, speaking for himself and not the state, would also like to see more emphasis on the benefits of treatment. "I don't see legalization as a panacea to all drug-related problems, but we have to come up with a better way to get people to stop using drugs other than saying, 'You're a very bad person and you need to go to jail,'" Gray says. "To me, the root issue is why people take drugs in the first place. I don't see that issue getting the kind of attention and resources that would dramatically affect the problem. If you deal with that issue first you sort of cut the whole Hydra off at its legs instead of chopping off one head at a time." - --------------- "WE AS A SOCIETY CAN DO BETTER" Before the fourth, and last, panel in his series at St. Mark's Cathedral, Quintana pushes his wheelchair through a growing crowd of people about to take seats in neatly arranged rows of folding chairs. Although he repeatedly refers to his own life as "fortunate" and "lucky," he did not escape the ravages of multiple sclerosis, which disabled his legs. It's rare that Quintana ever talks about past events, or the fate life dealt him, in conversation. There's too much to be done for the future. There are people to meet, hands to shake, comments to hear, ideas that need discussing. After a short round of introduction from the panelists, the evening's panel, "The Morality of the 'War on Drugs,'" is launched. It's already clear that, with several physicians and Ph.Ds on board, this will be the most scholarly of the four discussions. Dr. Jay Jacobson, medical doctor and ethicist at LDS Hospital and the U.'s school of medicine, draws perhaps the most surprising and humorous conclusion of the evening by observing that Anglos' drugs of choice --- alcohol, tobacco, Prozac, etc. --- have always been legal, while drugs common to other cultures --- coca leaves of the Andes --- have not been. Match that observation with another --- the fact that police actions are more often directed toward minorities --- and you have to wonder at the mixed motives at work in America's "War on Drugs." "I find it very peculiar, and wonder why it is, that we don't like it when people different from us use drugs we don't approve of, or use ourselves," Jacobson says. "You have to conclude that we can't stand it when others might use drugs we don't approve of to feel good once in a while. And you have to conclude that we don't like it when these people feel good." The audience erupts in laughter. Steven Epperson, programs coordinator for the Utah Humanities Council and a former professor of religion at BYU, returns the panel to a grave tone. To his mind, drugs have been demonized by Western, monotheistic religions worried that their effects might invite the consideration of other gods and deities. The real failure is not so much the "War on Drugs," but the failure of society and religious communities to prevent the conditions that invite drug use in the first place. Other panelists take turns, condemning the "War on Drugs" in no uncertain terms. The audience ponders it all in silence. Questions are directed at certain panelists. Who's to say those in attendance leave a little wiser? Who wonders if anything will change? Before the closing, Quintana asks the audience to change the law through their votes. "Give the politicians a graceful way out," he says. Even with the crowd gone, wheeling himself around the church rectory, Quintana's mind never stops turning the subject around. Sure, Utah is a hard place to bring up the topic of decriminalizing drugs. But who wants to preach to the converted? "I figure it's going to take me 10 years working with other people to change these laws, but I am going to change these laws. They're hurting far too many people," Quintana says. "These laws are going to change. We as a society can do better. And do you know what? The people here tonight were not radicals. They're law-abiding, professional people."