The Ugly Truth





5 January 2012
Why Napa Sucks! Part Seven: The District Attorney is a Life-Stealing Jailer





In last year's Fourth of July Parade, one public servant led the display, sitting atop a Mercedes Benz covertible. It was District Attorney Gary Lieberstein; on the grill was a sign that said, "A Voice for the Victims."

It was fitting that our DA placed himself front and center in our Independence Day celebration, because there is no one person more responsible for the bureaucratic police state that exists in Napa than Gary Lieberstein. This is the man who will incarcerate as many of us as he can to protect our freedoms from our exercising them.

Napa authorities routinely criminalize normal human behavior, and District Attorney Gary Lieberstein encourages the practice in order to jail you on any contrived pretext. And if you misstep in your dealings with the cops--don't jump fast enough when they order it, question their presence, resist allowing them into your home without a warrant--they might just kill you.

Gary Lieberstein will not object; he depends on those cop votes to get elected. He depends on those cops to keep feeding victims to his prosecutors.

A year before that parade, to the week, Napa Sheriff's deputies shot a man in the back as he ran away from the cannabis farm he tended in the forest. He was said to have had a gun, and the officers claimed they expected him to shoot at them from the woods. Either of those assertions may or may not be true.

Five months later--a year ago, last Thankgiving weekend--the Napa Police Department executed a man in front of his house because he was said to be despondent and suicidal. He was taken out by a sniper. By a sniper. Apparently because he wanted to be left alone and didn't want to be dragged off to the State Hospital. So they killed him for resisting arrest; he may or may not have had a knife, he may or may not have reached for it. You never know what happened when the cops are involved, because they're inveterate liars, and even the ones who aren't thugs will cover for the rest.

The District Attorney, of course, decided that it was justifiable homicide in both cases.

Any citizen who shot someone in vaguely similar circumstances, even in clear self-defense, would be charged with murder.

This all has something to do with the war on drugs, and the special measures the authorities decided were needed to deal with the issue. Warrantless searches, violent police raids with guns, immediate confiscation of property and entrapping people with stings were all defended as necessary tools in that drug war against crime bosses and their gangs.

You know, like Al Pacino's murderous Tony Montana in the Scarface movies. Now they're using them against us and our children. It's become so routine around Napa County that residents think it's normal.

Long after California voters decriminalized cannabis and dictated that the maximum penalty for less than an ounce was a $100 fine, on a par with traffic tickets, Napa prosecuted people by the hundreds over the next 30 years with creative loopholes. If you're caught with a joint in your pocket while riding a bicycle, you're charged with a felony worth five years in prison: transportation of cannabis.

Get that? Walking with a joint, $100 fine; riding bike, five years and thousands in legal fees and penalties. If you have two joints and a plastic baggy, you'll be charged with possession with intent to distribute, a felony worth another five years. The same happens, of course, if you're driving a car; and if you have an empty gas can and a rag in the trunk, they can charge you with having materials for a bomb, in connection to a drug enterprise. That's good for another ten years.

This was not what voters had in mind, and however you feel about drugs is beside the point. The point is, in 1978, we decided as the people of California to stop the policy of persecuting, jailing and often killing people over a personal habit. And this County decided to twist the law to continue doing exactly that.

Now remember; this law was passed in 1978, more than 10 years after San Francisco's Hippie invasions, 10 years of watching young lives gratuitously ruined by Authority so young people wouldn't use drugs and possibly ruin their lives on their own. Ironic, no?

While that unsmoked joint is worth a mere $100 fine if you're out for a walk, if you should actually smoke half of it and save the rest for later, you're vulnerable to a charge of possessing concentrated cannabis, another felony worth a few years.

This is all the result of an unholy, unstated conspiracy of silence and behavior between the police agencies of this County and District Attorney Lieberstein. The cops would not be arresting people on charges so trumped up as to amount to framing somebody for a non-existent crime if the DA and his staff did not prosecute the victims of this kind of police abuse.

A few years ago, California voters passed a law designed to keep drug offenders out of jail for a first offense; they would be offered counselling, and probation, and all kinds of help to remedy their "problem" before putting them in actual jail.

The local response? They just reinforced their efforts to falsely charge people to ensnare them even deeper in the corrupt system here prevailing. Then they offer you a program like the one at the State Hospital, where you live on site for 90 days, often with hardened drug addicts and criminals. And you get to pay for the privilege to avoid regular jail. Someone facing one of those cannabis charges turned from a hundred dollar fine into multiple felonies does the 90 days, then ends up on probation, often with demands to attend pricey counseling sessions, in addition to a probation regimen consisting of drug tests, random searches, the prohibition of drinking.

If you should slip up under this scrutiny, then you go to jail for violation of probation or parole. So even after decriminalizing cannabis 30 years ago, even after several votes to legalize cannabis for medical uses, even after this law designed to keep non-violent offenders out of jail, the Napa District Attorney finds a way to continue incarcerating citizens young and old, on and off, for years.

It's called life on the installment plan.

Whenever I talk to friends about the realities in this town, I hear responses to the effect that people "like that" deserve whatever happens to them. They're criminals, after all. And even if they're not, "They should have known better."

It doesn't occur to them that the punishment should fit the crime, and it seems beyond their comprehension that the authorities would just make things up to entrap people.

The 20-year-old facing a dozen serious charges because he accused cops of brutality as they beat his friend. Obstruction of justice, among others.

The 25-year-old arrested for a traffic warrant worth a couple of hundred dollars; on admitting him to jail they found a half-inch of unsmoked joint in his pocket. Charged with possession of concentrated cannabis and trying to smuggle drugs into jail.

Legions of youngsters arrested for "Lying to a police officer" and "Obstruction of justice" resulting from traffic stops and short conversations with a cop. The police ask for their addresses initially, and if they don't match the address on the driver's license when they check, it's jail.

Now they're arresting grandma for not having her medical prescriptions with her in the car.

Just the other day, they arrested a guy for public drunkeness in his home, after tasing him, because he tried to lock his door against them.

A while back I wrote about the trial of a woman accused of trying to steal an illegal alien's wallet during an act of prostitution. The DA's office tried to get her a life sentence under the three strikes law because she'd been convicted of a couple of petty crimes in Oregon. She got lucky; only eight years. In the old days, the man would have been deported immediately, and she would have gotten 30 days in jail.

Even if the woman is nothing but a stupid, larcenous whore, you don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars processing her through the legal system and sending her to overcrowded prisons that don't have room for robbers, murderers and rapists.

But our DA isn't interesed in keeping the local peace and making this a safe place to live, he isn't interested in justice, and he's immune to notions of common human decency.

The way these people measure their success is by how many people they jail and how many felony convictions they can accumulate for their career scorecards.

They stack the deck by over-charging you in the first place--that transportation of marijuana scam, worth five years, for instance, instead of the $100 ticket--and then they offer you a plea deal. Plead guily to their made-up felony, accept probation, and you don't get any jail time. At least not immediately. But you might do years in the future, because violating probation is a crime, and they get to throw you in jail summarily, without any conventional legal protections.

Not that those are worth anything around here in the first place.

If you can't afford a lawyer, the County will offer you a public defender, who works out of the same building as the District Attorney's minions. You will also sign an agreement to pay the public defender if you lose. The County pays the public defender, and the defendent pays the County that pays the public defender. So, winning cases will stigmatize the lawyer since he won't be adding money to his department's budget. Then there's the fact that the public defender knows he and his client really don't stand much of a chance beating the charges, no matter how absurd. The whole legal system is against them, from the cops who frame people and lie about it on the stand, to any DA investigtors who may get involved gathering witnesses and intimidating them just right. If you don't cooperate as they demand, you'll be charged with obstruction of justice or accused as an accomplice after the fact. And the DA can allot as many of his lawyers as he wants against that lone public defender.

An equivalent defense would cost tens of thousands of dollars and a private detective firm.

Imagine that a cop comes to your door, says they received a report that someone was breaking in. You're in your own home, you're acting as normally as anyone answering his door, but the officer insists on coming inside to search your house. Imagine you say, no, you don't want anyone searching your house. Just because. The cop insists, you hold your ground. And then find yourself beaten and abused, your house ransacked, maybe your kids manhandled as well. Perhaps they shoot your dog.

Your reward for maintaining your right against a warrantless search will be multiple felony charges, including resisting arrest, assaulting an officer, obstruction of justice, lying to a police officer; and if your house is sufficiently untidy and if you have kids, throw in child endangerment. That's 10, 20 years worth of prison time. And in direct proportion to the inappropriateness of the cops' behavior is the extent to which the DA will try to intimidate you with inflated criminal charges. Otherwise, you can sue them. That's why they never apologize, no matter how badly they treat citizens.

Of course, public defenders advise their clients to plead guilty. They seldom stand a chance, and confronted with 10 years in prison or pleading guilty to a felony and avoiding immediate prison, it is the smart thing to do except for someone of the strongest character and vast resources.

And the sad reality is that most people just don't have the courage or strength to fight. They're scared, they're confused, and they're especially disillusioned.

Most public defenders, by the way, would really prefer to work for the DA.

Child support, driving under the influence and domestic abuse are his biggest moneymakers; and I'd guess that much less than half the cases they prosecute are legitimate. But people don't fight because they don't have a chance. If they fight and lose, they risk years in jail, deserved or not. And by pleading guilty, they accrue thousands of dollars of debt, mounting despite payments, because of the usorious interest rates the DA imposes. Miss a payment, you go to jail for violation of probation, and you get more debt.

Another unsupported but probably true statement: Half the men over 20 years of age who have lived in this county for 10 or more years have been owned by the Napa criminal justice system at some point. I don't know the specifics, but I'm amazed at the numbers of people I meet whose lives have been warped by Lieberstein and his ilk.

These people, your public servants, and Gary Lieberstein in particular, are guilty of stealing thousands of years of young people's lives, of tormenting them, of jailing them, of beating them, even killing them from time to time.

There is nothing you can do about it, because the cops he empowers will vote for him, the public servants who depend on the money he extorts will vote for him, ignorant people who confuse law and order with official misconduct will vote for him.

And if he has his way, we'll have a new jail downtown to lock up even more of us.

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