07/18/10 - Val Zuniga

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Century of Lies

Val Zuniga, Houston defense atty on how Houston maintains status as "gulag filling station" of the world

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Century of Lies July 18, 2010

The failure of Drug war is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors and millions more. Now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century of Lies.

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Ah yes, it is Century of Lies. I am Dean Becker. We have with us, in studio, Val Zuniga, he’s an attorney here in the Gulag Filling Station of the planet, Houston Texas. I first heard about Val when I was driving down the freeway with my girlfriend.

I was taking her to the hospital following her heart attack and she said, “What in the heck is that?” and there was a billboard on the side of the road that said 713druglaw.com and I thought, “Well that’s very interesting and very specific lawyering”, if you will. So I contacted his office and I want to welcome you to the studio, Val.

Val Zuniga: Well Dean, first of all, thank you for having me on the show. One of the things that we’re trying to do with my law practice is we focus on representing people that are specifically charged with drug and drug related offensives.

It’s interesting, especially in this city that people are so hamstrung with these types of cases. It’s very difficult to represent people with these types of cases at this time. We’re getting a lot of opposition certainly from the state attorney’s office and we’re starting to have more and more issues with law enforcement because they’re trying to keep their numbers up.

You see a lot more busts. You see a lot more of what I would consider “dirty busts” where you have informants and at times we’re starting to see more and more where the people that have higher positions within these cartels and in these local cartels especially, are starting to tip off the task force officers and law enforcement, setting up their underlings so they can continue to go about their business and assist the law enforcement with keeping their numbers up.

Dean Becker: Ok, I’ll tell you what, when you got in to this, you’ve been lawyering now, what is it now, seventeen years?

Val Zuniga: No, I moved to Houston in 1998.

Dean Becker: Ok, that’s right.

Val Zuniga: When I got into this initially, I was fascinated with criminal defense. I’ve found now that 75% of my practice is specifically geared towards drugs and drug related cases.

The other 25%, which is still criminal defense, usually has some tie in to drug cases as we discussed a little bit earlier, if I represent someone on a robbery they’re probably out stealing or robbing somebody because they’re using that money to try to get drugs.

Dean Becker: Yes and it really kind of boils down to, where do we want to focus our police forces? What should be the reason to have these courtrooms open? Who should be before these judges awaiting justice? The fact of the matter is that Houston is kind of an example to the world of what not to do.

Our jails are nearly, unconstitutionally overcrowded. The courtrooms are jammed packed. They’re rushing cases through. They’re forcing people to “take the five of we’ll give you twenty” sort of a deal, right? It’s all set up to expedite justice. That’s not how justice is supposed to work, is it?

Val Zuniga: That’s true. Starting with the first topic there, our jails are overflowing here in Harris County. We’re shipping inmates off to north Texas, east Texas, Louisiana; which makes it difficult for defense attorneys to represent their clients. As often is the case with drug cases, you usually have defendants where a family may be able to afford an attorney, but not be able to afford a bond. So, it’s difficult to represent a client who’s been shipped of to Louisiana for housing with a trial date coming up.

You’re absolutely right as well, that the types of people that are coming up before the courts are usually lower income people, usually Black or Hispanic. The law enforcement for some reason here in Harris County, seems to focus more on those types of individuals, those types of defendants.

Earlier we were talking about law enforcement’s ability to shake down or harass people and now they’re starting to be able to do that legally. One of the driving forces behind the insurance law that the Texas legislature passed, demanding that people have car insurance, has opened a brand new door for law enforcement.

Now they sit on street corners in lower income areas and run license plates routinely just to see whether or not people have insurance, which gives them a reason to stop the person, shake them down and determine if they have any drugs on their person or in their vehicle.

Dean Becker: This is symptomatic. Houston, as I say, serves as an example, but the fact of the matter is, we have a better use for our tax dollars. We have murders and rapers and molesters and more violent people deserving of that law enforcement attention, do we not?

Val Zuniga: We do. The problem that we have there is that even with Houston being as big as it is, the money is in drugs. The money for these task forces, the money for the court system gets and all these treatment programs, that are county and state based, all of that is based on the number of arrests and the number of defendants and the number of convictions they get.

Dean Becker: And the number of referrals to the treatment centers?

Val Zuniga: Absolutely. Absolutely. You have state funded; you also have on a local level. You have, like the substance abuse treatment facility, which is called Peden here in Harris County and New Choices. Those are all county run facilities so they depend on the state dollars.

The only way they get those state dollars is by getting people convicted or referred to the treatment centers here within the County.

Dean Becker: I saw a break down the other day of all of the treatment centers and educational facilities and others that depend on UNITA and the ONDCP distribution system. They are part of the “anti-drug campaign”. They stand for continuing down this same road.

As you’re saying, that is where they get their dollars. It’s by being a part of this overall bailiwick. Their portion comes every year, as long as they keep spouting the same words to continue their existence.

Val Zuniga: Yes and I am sure you’ve said it before: Drugs is a big business. It employs a lot of people. It keeps judges on the bench. It keeps prosecutors in the courthouse and gives them jobs, the treatment centers rely on the money to pay counselors and the people that work there at the residential treatment centers.

Absolutely. They encourage the Drug War because they need the money.

Dean Becker: Yes. It’s worldwide and it’s almost across the board. I mean, everybody from the US postal service to the forest rangers have a portion of their budget that deals with the Drug War. It’s just – I don’t know, it continues on. We’re speaking with Val Zuniga, he’s an attorney here in Houston and he’s got a great big sign on the freeway: 713druglaw.com.

We’re here talking about the fact that Houston, in so many ways, is leading the world in way it incarcerates people, the way it refuses to let go of people. A dirty urine can get you sent you back to prison here, just as quick as can be, right?

Val Zuniga: Absolutely. It becomes a vicious cycle. If you get in a situation where a person is arrested for drugs, first they have to hire an attorney and make bond, if they can afford it. If they’re placed on any type of probation, one the conditions of that probation is that they are ordered to maintain employment.

The problem that stems from there, is that they have to go see a probation officer in the middle of the day. So, employers are going to more apt to hire someone that they don’t have to worry about making special accommodations for. For them to go and visit with their probation officer, taking time off to do community service, participating in all of the programs like the drug offender education program, taking the drug and alcohol evaluation and treatment analysis that’s required when people are placed on probation for drugs.

We’re not talking necessarily about serious, hard core drugs, like crack addicts, people even with minor offenses, like possessing marijuana under two ounces, which is a Class B misdemeanor here in the state of Texas. They’re required to go all of those same programs. It kind of sets them up for failure, so to speak. Now there are a few judges that are really keen on treatment and they’re trying to do the right thing. More often than not, you just run into a roadblock when get into the legal system and you’ve been charged with drug possession.

Dean Becker: Oft times, like you say, sometimes people get thrown in jail and they’ve got the choice of paying for a lawyer or paying a bail bondsman and even if they can do both, oft times maybe you’re in there a few days. Your car’s parked in an impound somewhere and it’s hundreds of dollars to get that thing out and it might not be worth the amount they’re wanting. You might have lost you’re apartment. You might even lose your girlfriend, though anger or whatever reasons.

It’s a big stumbling block, just having been arrested and being a few days off the streets but then, it’s like you say, you’ve got to meet with all these people, to cross all the Ts and dot all those Is an prove that you’re a good citizen.

Hell, you light even lose your driver’s license in some of these instances and be unable to make these appointments. Go ahead.

Val Zuniga: Well Dean, you make an excellent point. I was about to touch on that. One of the things that the Texas legislature has done, at least, is when a person is convicted for a drug offense, if they’re over the age of twenty one and they get a conviction, they lose their license for six months. So this further puts the pressure on folks.

You’ve lost your license, now how are you going to get a job? You have a conviction on your record, even if it is for something as minor as possession of a small amount of marijuana, it’s tougher to get a job. Employers see that and they’re going to pick the kid that candidate that does not have that legal baggage, so to speak.

The other issue that you run into is that if you are able to get that case dismissed, that case is still lingers around on your record because of the actual arrest. Now, there are expunction proceedings but very recently, as recently as the last term, the House and the Senate in the state of Texas passed an expunction law, which would allow people to get their cases expunged.

The Governor, Rick Perry, promptly vetoed that law, which now means that people are required to wait until the statute of limitations expires on a case, regardless of whether or not a case had been dismissed. The logic being, “Well, if we decide we want to refile that case for any reason, we don’t want the person to have the benefit of having the case been expunged. But, the reality is, it’s seldom, if ever, that those cases ever get refilled.

Dean Becker: But it’s still sitting there like a sore.

Val Zuniga: Absolutely.

Dean Becker: Just a leftover, if you will. Once again, we’re speaking with Val Zuniga, attorney at law in Houston, Texas.

I want to kind of talk about, I have been arrested in this town. I think it was eleven times. Nine of them, for having drugs in my pocket while I was drunk and they used that justification – and again, I’m not saying I am holier than thou, sinless or whatever.

I’m saying they should have arrested me for being drunk but they found microscopic, miniscule amounts, seeds sometimes, in the floorboard of the car that they used as the main reason I was going to jail. When it was my behavior, as a drunk, that merited the arrest.

They oft times use those. The drug possession becomes the major charge, when the reason were stopping someone was for something entirely different. You thoughts?

Val Zuniga: You see that all the time. Now in your case, it may have been a public intoxication case, in the state of Texas, that’s a jailable offense, something that they can take you to jail for. So, what they’ll do, is law enforcement will typically use that as a segue into other searches.

“Well, we’ve arrested you, so now we have to do an inventory search. So we’re going to make you take everything out of your pockets and violate your rights by searching your person”.

In traffic offenses, if somebody gets stopped for failing to signal a lane change and if they have a municipal court warrant. Well, the only two things that you can not be arrested for in the state of Texas, usually, are speeding and open container. Everything else is a jailable offense here in the state of Texas.

So, if a cop chooses to arrest you for not wearing your seatbelt, he can then conduct an inventory search on your vehicle and search you trunk, search everything, the premise there being, “Well, we have to make sure we have an inventory all of the property to make sure none of it’s stolen”.

What they’re really doing is using that as an opportunity to try and search for drugs. Many times they will flat out ask you: “Do you have anything illegal in your vehicle?”

Dean Becker: They’ll go easier on you if you tell them about it.

Val Zuniga: Sure. Sure.

Dean Becker: Yeah. Sure it will.

Val Zuniga: So again, you see the law enforcement using that. Now, they say they use it as a tool but what it is, it’s a flat out violation of our personal rights, giving them the opportunity to shake us down, so to speak and try to find something to arrest you for.

Dean Becker: Exactly. Exactly. Now OK, we’re going to take a little break here. We’ll be back in about a minute and a half. I want to sat this, before we go, talking with Val Zuniga, you said speeding and open container are the only two things that they can’t arrest you for?

Val Zuniga: Typically, yes. Those things, they can only write a ticket for.

Dean Becker: That says a whole lot about Texas right there, doesn’t it?

Val Zuniga: There’s actual case law out there, a woman in a car with her children was not wearing her seatbelt. She gave the officer a hard time, so he went ahead and took her into custody. The children went into protective custody with CPS. They searched her car.

Dean Becker: “But speeding and open container? We’ll let you go this time”. We’ll be back in just a minute and a half.

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(Machine gun and shooting sounds with screaming)

That is the sound… of the American society, economy, the people, shooting themselves in the foot.

(Screaming in background)

Continuously. (screaming)

Twenty four hours per day. (screaming)
Seven days a week. (screaming)
For eternity (screaming)…

In order to wage the War on Drugs. (exhaustive moan)

Please visit drugtruth.net

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(music)

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the Abolitionist Moment.

“Prohibition is an awful flock. We like it.
It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop. We like it.
It’s left a trail of graft and slime
It don’t prohibit worth a dime.
It’s filled our land with vice and crime.
Nevertheless. We’re for it.”

- Franklin Adams 1931

Through a willing or silent embrace of Drug War, we are insuring more death, disease, crime and addiction. Some have prospered from the policy of drug prohibition and dare not allow their stance taken, to be examined in a new light. But for the rest, ignorance and superstition will eventually be forgiven, but what Houston has done in the name of Drug War will never be forgotten.

Please visit: endprohibition.org

Do it for the children.
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Indeed, my friends: Do it for the children. Visit: endprohibition.org. That’s what we’ll end this show talking about. It’s the need for you need to do your part. You know the truth and you’re sitting there silently watching this madness unfold, you got to do your part folks, please. Join in the effort to expose this Drug War as one of the biggest failures since human slavery. Give it your shot. Do your best. Please.

This is Century of Lies. I have with us, in studio, Val Zuniga, an attorney from Houston. Val Zuniga, he’s here talking about his practice, which revolves around 75% around the Drug War. He has a big billboard up on the freeway here, 713druglaw.com, that’s what got my attention.

Val, I wanted to come back, if we could, to the thought that the open container is one of those that would not garner an arrest here in Houston. Now, I’m told we have a caller on the line who wants to jump into that. Frank, go ahead.

Frank (by phone): Hi, this is Frank. I had an officer tell me one time that he can not arrest you for speeding, but he could because you are probably driving reckless at the same time. So imagine that.

Dean Becker: Well, isn’t that the case? They can always kind of reinterpret what’s the law or what’s before their eyes or just however they want to, can’t they?

Frank: They make it to fit their need at the time. Ain’t it great?

Dean Becker: Well, that’s Texas isn’t it? Frank, thank you for that call. Val, your thoughts?

People do, cops do “testi-lie” do they not?

Val Zuniga: Absolutely. That call is a good example of how the police and the District Attorney’s office, they have the means to manipulate the system. What the caller was talking about is reckless driving being a offense that is jailable, that would lead to the officer’s ability to arrest the person.

Now, speeding would probably be considered a lesser included charge of reckless driving, because you can be reckless by driving at an excessive speed. The pure offense of speeding is not a jailable offense. Just another tool that law enforcement uses to try and get to the next level. To be able to search you or your car, or your house.

Dean Becker: I can’t remember where I saw it but there was a discussion, an on-line discussion, where a homeland security agent, said he was in the airport and saw someone that was smiling too much and another one that was frowning too much. He saw another one who seemed nervous and another one who seemed to calm but all of these were reasons to conduct a search.

They can take facts and just make them to fit within their agenda, to just do their job. Your thoughts about that?

Val Zuniga: Certainly. You find that sometimes in cases where police officers stop cars for looking suspicious because they were driving too slow in a high crime area or they were driving too fast in a crime area.

Cops try to use any excuse that they can. I mean, again, it’s all about the numbers as we’ve talked about, Dean. They’re trying to make arrests because they know that those arrests lead to dollars and they need that money to support their law enforcement programs.

It’s no secret that they talk about quotas. They talk about how many arrests need to be made. The district attorney’s office here in Harris County, they talk about quotas as well. One thing we discussed earlier, as a conversation that I had with an Assistant District Attorney, where they were at a judge’s meeting and the judges were commenting about how their cost of living raise was being affected by the low numbers of convictions they were getting because they weren’t moving cases along fast enough through the court system.

So, the dollars that were going to be used to give the DAs a raise, which they justly deserve, are now being used to process cases through the court system and make available the people giving them their legal rights. They want to take away the rights to bump the prosecutor’s pay. It seems kind of counter-productive.

Dean Becker: It does, but it also sounds like maybe in the long run that will help some of these prosecutors to come around a say, “Yeah, this Drug War really isn’t working out for me because I need a pay raise”. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Now I’ve had Pat Lycos in here, a couple of times to talk about the justice system here in Harris County. The one that irks me and I focus on every time is what was House Bill 2391, which says “it is no necessary to arrest or jail anybody in the state of Texas who has less than four ounces of marijuana”.

Now the only county in the state, well, maybe others have. I know that Travis County, Austin, no longer makes those arrests but the District Attorney, Pat Lycos told me, it’s too much paperwork. She afraid that marijuana is addictive and it’s going to lead to other drugs. Spouting the same old rumors and propaganda from days of yore. That’s a large contributor to that jail population and to that overcrowding, is that not?

Val Zuniga: Certainly and those menial offenses, the small possession marijuana cases, that’s what’s clogging up the system right now. Now to their credit, there are a lot of Assistant DAs out there that are trying to move these cases along.

I heard you talking earlier about marijuana for medicinal reasons and believe it or not, there are Assistant DAs that will listen to that argument. Not dismiss the case outright; at least think about some different form of punishment for the person because they understand that marijuana is not a severe drug.

In regard to your comment about Pat Lycos, one of the things they were thinking of instituting at the DA’s office and I haven’t seen that they have yet, is they were talking about possession cases of less than a gram. We’re talking about cocaine or crack.

Dean Becker: Less than a gram or a one hundredth of a gram?

Val Zuniga: I’m sorry, a one hundredth of a gram. You are absolutely right. Basically, the crack residue cases, crack pipe residue cases. Where they were thinking about issuing tickets or asking law enforcement to issue tickets for paraphernalia, as opposed to arresting these folks. Well, again, that’s not going to solve the jail overcrowding, if they continue to arrest people for having less then two ounces of marijuana

Dean Becker: Right. Once again, we are speaking to attorney Val Zuniga, based out of Houston. Check out his website: 713druglaw.com

I want to go ahead and run a couple of pieces we’ve got here. We’ve been dropping our Drug War Facts here for a while, so let’s go ahead and hear from Mary Jane Borden.

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Mary Jane Borden: Hello drug policy aficionados, I’m Mary Jane Borden, editor of Drug War Facts.

The question for this week asks: Is alcohol a dangerous drug?

Let’s look at some statistics. A 2009 report from the National Center for Health Statistics estimated that about 22,000 people died of alcohol induced causes in 2006. A 1993 number quoted in a 2009 study from the Journal of Psychopharmacology stated, “4% of the global burden of disease is attributable to alcohol, about as much as that to tobacco and hypertension and casually related to 60 medical conditions”.

An editorial in the New Zealand Journal of Medicine, calculated that “the lethal dose of alcohol divided by the typical recreation dose, in other words, safety ratio is 10. Closer to heroin, safety ratio 6 and GHB safety ratio 8, in terms of dangers of overdose”. The editorial further asserted that alcohol is consistently more dangerous that LSD, with a safety ratio of 1000 or cannabis who’s safety ratio is greater than 1000.

A 1998 the Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis found that “federal statistics show that a large percentage of criminal offenders are under the influence of alcohol alone when they committed their crime. 36.3% or a total of 1.9 million offenders. Federal research also shows that for more that 40% of convicted murders being held in either jail or state prisons, alcohol use was a factor in the crime”. That Journal of Psychopharmacology study compared alcohol to GHB concluded” the degree of danger to public health caused by ethanol, is similar to that caused by GHB”.

In the United States, GHB is a Schedule 1 Drug, the same classification as heroin. These facts and others like them can be found in the alcohol chapter of Drug War Facts at www.drugwarfacts.org.

If you have a question for which you need facts, please email it to me at mjborden@drugwarfacts.org and I’ll try to answer your question in an upcoming show. So when you need facts about drugs and drug policy, you can get the facts at Drug War Facts.

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(music)

Enough. Enough! The multinational companies that make the goods, that write the paychecks, that own the media, that control the politicians have for too long run amok. We the people of the Unites States of America, have for too long been hornswoggled, rode hard and put up wet.

The corporations who now own the government send our jobs overseas to make a better profit, to buy a bigger yacht. Democracy has been stolen from our nation disguised as security. Ignorance is taught at every level. Trust and obey is our mantra. In the meantime, the water boils to a deadly fraught. The future of America, of individual Americans, such as yourself, is in your hot, boiled, red little hands.

The corporations are counting on you, being too distracted, disengaged and to afraid to stop their takeover of all your rights. A quote from Thomas Jefferson, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”.

Will you jump from the boiling water? Will you dare to compare the US constitution to what these corporate whores in congress now call governance? Will you continue to squat and watch the bubbles rise?

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All right my friends, thank for joining us on Cultural Baggage.

Some program notes, I wanted to let you know that on Monday, July 19th, I will be hosting Time for Hemp on American Freedom radio, where seventeen additional broadcast stations will be carrying the Drug Truth Network and I’ll be doing a regular segment there on American Freedom Radio, Time For Hemp, every Friday night from 11:45PM Central Time and please tune in.

Next week, our guest on Cultural Baggage will be Lynn Richmond, producer of a new movie, What if Cannabis Cures Cancer? and on Century of Lies it will be Michelle Alexander talking about the new “Jim Crow”.

You guys are the answer. You know it. You’ve got to do something about it. Don’t just sit here and listen to this and say, “Yeah, that’s right!” Do your part. Do something about it. As always, I remind you, there’s no truth, justice logic, no scientific fact, no medical data and no reason for this drug war to exist.

Please visit our website: endprohibition.org

Prohibido istac evilesco!

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For the Drug Truth Network, this is Dean Becker. Asking you to examine our policy of Drug Prohibition.

The Century of Lies.

The show produced at the Pacifica Studios of KPFT, Houston. Drug Truth Network programs, archived at the James A. Baker III Institute for Policy Studies.

Transcript provided by: Ayn Morgan of www.eigengraupress.com