Federal Judge of 17 Years Repents – Compares Damage Done by “War on Drugs” to Destruction of World War II

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The “war on drugs” is one of the most irrational, idiotic and destructive public policy failures in American history, and that’s saying a lot. I’ve covered this topic many times at Liberty Blitzkrieg, but nothing spells it out like the repentant words of a former federal judge, who admittedly ruined countless lives for no reason.

From the Atlantic:

ASPEN, Colo.—Former Federal Judge Nancy Gertner was appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in 1994. She presided over trials for 17 years. And Sunday, she stood before a crowd at The Aspen Ideas Festival to denounce most punishments that she imposed.

Among 500 sanctions that she handed down, “80 percent I believe were unfair and disproportionate,” she said. “I left the bench in 2011 to join the Harvard faculty to write about those stories––to write about how it came to pass that I was obliged to sentence people to terms that, frankly, made no sense under any philosophy.”

She went on to savage the War on Drugs at greater length. “This is a war that I saw destroy lives,” she said. “It eliminated a generation of African American men, covered our racism in ostensibly neutral guidelines and mandatory minimums… and created an intergenerational problem––although I wasn’t on the bench long enough to see this, we know that the sons and daughters of the people we sentenced are in trouble, and are in trouble with the criminal justice system.”

She added that the War on Drugs eliminated the political participation of its casualties. “We were not leveling cities as we did in WWII with bombs, but with prosecution, prison, and punishment,” she said, explaining that her life’s work is now focused on trying to reconstruct the lives that she undermined––as a general matter, by advocating for reform, and as a specific project: she is trying to go through the list of all the people she sentenced to see who deserves executive clemency.

Enough is enough. Let’s end this stupidity once and for all.

For related articles, see:

How NSA Surveillance Was Birthed from the Drug War – The DEA Tracked Billions of Phone Calls Pre 9/11

DEA Agents Caught Having Drug Cartel Funded Prostitute Sex Parties Received Slap on the Wrist; None Fired

The DEA Strikes Again – Agents Seize Man’s Life Savings Under Civil Asset Forfeiture Without Charges

90 Pounds of Cocaine Found on Cargo Ship Owned by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Father-in-Law

The United States has More People in Jail than High School Teachers and Engineers

Land of the Free: American Police Make an Arrest Every 2 Seconds in 2012

In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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13 thoughts on “Federal Judge of 17 Years Repents – Compares Damage Done by “War on Drugs” to Destruction of World War II”

  1. “…covered ‘our’ racism…”
    Speak for yourself, lady. Obviously still not willing to take personal responsibility for her actions.

    Reply
  2. Only the drugs which are funding people who defend themselves against tyranny are illegal.
    So the war on drugs is a war on free people.
    The war on drugs is genocide.

    Reply
  3. Not to mention the simultaneous ‘drug war on the competition’
    Mexico has how many murders the last ten years? 150,000?

    Reply
  4. The Longest and most Destructive War against the American People by the Government. Using Prisoners to move the economy forward through the use of Prison Slave Indemnity Bonds floated on the market. This Judge is going to Hell even though she is having second thoughts now. Too little, too late. How many lives has he snuffed out?

    Reply
  5. Among 500 sanctions that she handed down,
    Jct; That’s a nickel-dimer compared to the damage done by Canadian judges in civil courts. She ruined 700 lives, Justices Manson and Phelan cut of 18,000 of our sickest patients, sick enough to qualify for herb, from their pot prescriptions in one shot over a year ago. David Shea’s already now dead. So who’s worse, criminal judges sentencing users unjustly, or Phelan and Manson genociding a group unjustly? Oh, didn’t make mainstream news! Har har har har har har.

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  6. If she was really so terribly heart broken over all of her sins from 17 years of ruining lives while on the bench, she’d actually DO something about it other than just shed some crocodile tears!! She’d write up affidavits exposing the scam of the legal system and demand that all those whom she has wronged be made as whole as possible again after being set free.
    She knew full well that what she was doing was wrong, maybe not from the very beginning, but well before 17 years was up she should have! She should have known that there is NO LAW ANYWHERE on ANY books that can be lawfully enforced upon someone against their will, unless the man or woman being charged is provably under the jurisdiction of those laws! We are all born free, and only supposed to be slaves under some government or other. If anyone is born into bondage, then where is the absolute proof of that fact? I will GLADLY plea guilty to ANY charge anyone make make upon me at any time, provided that they firstly show me some solid proof that I am actually subject to that law!

    Randy

    Reply
  7. Its not the war on drugs that was bad, it was the politics of it. Drugs like alcohol is still a scourge on humanity, its just that the drug effected brains don’t care anymore. La-La land is less demanding than facing the realities and responsibilities of life. Lay in the bed or in the gutter and let someone else provide.

    Reply
  8. Well having witnessed both from family and class mates who started with occasionally using just marijuana to seeing them become totally consumed. I have to say their deaths bother me greatly because they died before their 30’s all over weed. Anyone who says they have not also known of the same is flat out lieing. So don’t be fooled be honest and prohibition doesn’t work because of greed and stupidity. They go hand in hand.

    Reply
  9. I use this a LOT. You might like it too.

    I started to ask Ehrlichman a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
    – Dan Baum http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

    Reply

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