Common sense and insensible application of drug laws

DRC Net's weekly Chronicle newsletter features on story about Berkshire County DA David Capeless and his dunder-headed application of school zone enhancements against the teenage defendants in a local high school sting. These are my old stomping grounds and I've watched Capeless rise through the county court system based mostly on family connections. It's certainly not the quality of his work. The guy has always been a power mad jerk.

He's managed to get away with it thus far because usually his intractable injustice is meted out to poor black defendants. In this case he stepped too far out on the limb and his political career may well come crashing down. His victims are white middle class teenagers whose parents carry some political clout of their own and are willing to challenge his mindless application of sentencing enhancements that were originally enacted to deter adults from selling to schoolchildren - not to inappropriately punish teenagers experimenting with pot and selling a couple of joints to each other.

As some letters to the editor of the local paper have pointed out, no one leapt to the defense of the poor blacks who have been equally victimized by Capeless and it's admittedly unfortunate that no one has. But they get it wrong when they declare these young white defendants should be similarly ruined in the interests of equity. They should be joining forces in this campaign to rid the Berkshires of a heartless and souless prosecutor that cares more about grandstanding for the press than he does for the equitable administration of justice.