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...Governor Jan Brewer - "Did you know, that until January of 2009, any smugglers carrying under the threshold of 500 pounds of marijuana were often not prosecuted - a fact that smugglers knew all too well!"
Note that most of the sub 500lb cases were being prosecuted - the Feds referred them to the county who prosecuted most but not of them - also lack of funds.
Two years ago, an understaffed U.S. Attorney's Office in Tucson would have likely declined such a case - the office had a 500-pound threshold for marijuana cases. The office would have referred the case to a county attorney's office, which may or may not have taken it, depending on its criteria and resources.
Thanks to an influx of funds from the Justice Department's initiative to fight border-related crime, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tucson has nearly double the prosecutors it had three years ago. The office is prosecuting drug cases at a record clip - and going after people with smaller loads of pot in Southeastern Arizona, the busiest stretch along the U.S.-Mexico border for marijuana seizures.
The U.S. Attorney's Office always prosecuted sub-500-pound cases that came from the Tohono O'odham Nation as well as cases in which the suspects had guns or felony records. But until recently, the office referred hundreds of cases yearly to county attorneys.
The additional help from the Department of Justice allowed the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tucson to eliminate a threshold it never wanted in January 2009.
"I don't support the threshold but I understand why you would need to do one," said Burke. "At the end of the day, your prosecutors can only do so much."
In Santa Cruz County, Silva said he can't remember when his office received a federally declined case this year. That's a drastic change from 2006-2008, when his office was handling 50-60 federally referred cases a year. The office would take about 90 percent of the referred cases but had to pass on the others because of a lack of staffing, he said.
In Cochise County, Rheinheimer' office has received 12 cases this year from the feds, compared with 35 to 40 last year.
His attorneys prosecuted nine of this year's cases and he estimates they prosecuted a similar percentage in past years. Cochise County used to prosecute all federally referred cases that it determined it could likely get a conviction on until 2003, when the county determined the costs to the criminal justice system were too high.
Or perhaps it was the overwhelming will of the people to want to be able to purchase alcohol instead of giving in to the mob?
At the time of prohibition repeal, the same percentage of Americans who believe Marijuana should be legal today, believed that alcohol should be legal again.
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Agreed...legalize it tax it to death and use the taxes to pay border patrol agents to shoot on site!
