If I didn't know better, I would say that there are still judges who actually care about such quaint notions as mens rea:
Three years ago, federal prosecutors likened McLean, Virginia, pain doctor William Hurwitz to "a street-corner crack dealer." But it turned out there were a few differences.
Unlike a street-corner crack dealer, Hurwitz did not sell drugs. Instead, he prescribed narcotics to patients, the vast majority of them undisputedly legitimate, in an attempt to relieve severe chronic pain. The small minority of patients who used the pills to get high or sold them on the black market also claimed to be suffering unrelieved pain, and Hurwitz said he believed them.
Prosecutors said none of this mattered-not because Hurwitz was lying (although they suggested he was) but because, even if he was completely on the level, even if he was making a conscientious effort to treat pain, he was still guilty of drug trafficking. A federal appeals court recently rejected this astonishing assertion, dealing a blow to prosecutions that seek to punish mistakes in medical judgment with prison terms.
Once again, in the War on Drugs, you do not have to be intentionally doing anything wrong to be considered guilty of a very serious crime. In this case, a doctor who was clearly manipulated and had his kindness abused by a minority of his patients was going to be sent to prison for 25 years for a "crime" that he didn't even intend to commit. Now, fortunately the judges in the appeals court have seen right through it, but it remains to be seen what the Supreme Court might have to say about this case. I have the sickening suspicion that they would side with the DEA for some logically dubious reason, that would invariably be passed off as "nuanced, legal thinking."
How many things like this will it take for conservatives to finally realize that the only thing the War on Drugs has accomplished has been the near complete destruction of civil liberties and morality in the judicial system? This doctor's life was going to be ruined by federal officials for the sake of "making a statement." This is what the system has come to.
I have news for you, if you think that the ends justify these means, you are every bit the amoral scumbag that you think the drug users and dealers are.
"How many things like this will it take for conservatives to finally realize that the only thing the War on Drugs has accomplished has been the near complete destruction of civil liberties and morality in the judicial system?"
Answer: true conservatives already abhor the War...faux conservatives, or Republicans, will never understand, regardless of how many assualts on civil liberties are handed down by the corrupt judicial system...they are all as blind as bats...
I have never understood how people can look at obvious examples of abuse of good people, or force that was wildly disproportionate to the crime, and not get scared and outraged. I've been called violent because I freely admit that I think that shooting cops who act violently without just cause by civilized standards, under the color of law, is no vice. Then the sheep respond with their usual crap when I observe that I am actually more anti-violence than they are because I merely support the right of self-defense more than they do, and actually, unlike them, care about punishing everyone for behaving violently.
Excusing uncivilized conduct from cops is, objectively speaking, tantamount to saying that you are in favor of it because that which does not harm helps.