Today’s video of the day comes from the Star Jones show, where she and I discussed the Warren Jeffs trial and the limits of religious freedom.

Why Colombia’s top drug lord may get off easier than small-time offenders in the U.S.

Will Drug Lord Do Less Time Than the Average American Nonviolent Drug Offender?
By Anthony Papa 

The U.S. government recently praised the arrest of Colombia’s top drug lord Diego Montoya when he was captured earlier this month. Law enforcement and military officials say it was a powerful blow to Colombia’s most powerful drug cartel, comparing it to the capture of Al Capone during Prohibition.

Montoya, who had been on the FBI’s top ten most wanted list, is said to be responsible for providing as much as 70 percent of all the cocaine in the United States. In 1999, a $5 million bounty for his capture and extradition was offered after he was indicted in a federal court in Miami.

There is much talk about how this capture will affect the drug trade and the flow of drugs into the United States. But the question on my mind is how much time will he serve when he is brought to the United States to stand trial for the death and destruction he has caused? I would be willing to bet that he will get less time than many Americans who are now serving extraordinarily long sentences, many for low-level, nonviolent drug law violations under the notorious mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Some would ask how would I come to this conclusion.

If you look at the recently completed federal sentence of former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, who served a 17-year federal sentence for drug trafficking, it might give you a hint what is in store for Montoya. In Noriega’s case the U.S. attorney negotiated deals with 26 high-level drug dealers, including drug lord Carlos Lehder. They in turn received a package of perks that included leniency and cash payments, and were allowed to keep their drug earnings in return for testimony against the infamous general who was once a strong United States ally before he fell from grace in 1989, when the U.S. invaded Panama.

There are many Americans in prison that are serving sentences of more than 17 years in prison for simple drug crimes. These are marginalized offenders that don’t have the bargaining chips to establish deals. For example, Elaine Bartlett, a mother of four, served a 20-to-life sentence under the Rockefeller Drug Laws for seven ounces of cocaine. Her husband, Nathan Brooks, was sentenced to 25 years to life. The list goes on and on. There are an estimated 500,000 Americans locked up because of the drug war. Many of them are serving lengthy sentences because of a 30-year government campaign to demonize illicit drug use and implement mandatory minimum sentencing.

For the rest of the story, click here. 

By Bailing Out on Jury Duty, We Leave the Fate of Young Black Men to Everyone Else
By Tonyaa Weathersbee 

The Jena Six case has gone beyond being just one huge example of how the justice system in that Louisiana backwater is bordering on replicating the black codes of the Old South.

It also exposes other inequities that show how difficult a time black people have when it comes to making the justice system work for them.

This past weekend, an Associated Press story detailed facts that had either been missed or misconstrued in the maelstrom of the case of six youth black men who were slapped with 15 to 20-year sentences for what amounted to a schoolyard fight; a case that has now become the flashpoint of what some are calling a new civil rights movement.

Few of the facts that the AP story claims to clarify; i.e., there were two nooses, not three, and that students of all races sat under the “white” tree at some point, made a difference in the bottom line: The punishments for the Jena 6 are absurdly harsh and don’t fit the crime.

But one fact — that Jena Six defendant Mychal Bell was left to mercy of an all-white jury because the few blacks who were summoned failed to show — is one that begs to have more truth put behind it.

To read the story, click here.