On April 20, 2001, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency ordered the Peruvian Air Force to shoot down a plane suspected of smuggling drugs out of Peru. The plane was not carrying drugs but rather American missionaries Jim and Roni Bowers; Roni and seven-month-old daughter Charity died in the shooting.
Pilot Kevin Donaldson, though shot in the leg, managed to land the plane safely; Jim and six-year-old son Cody were not hurt in the shooting or crash.
After the incident, drug interdiction flights over Peru and neighboring Colombia were suspended while the U.S. government reevaluated its policies surrounding the practice of shooting down suspected drug-smuggling aircraft in foreign countries.
In 2002, the Bush administration settled with Richardson and the surviving members of the Bowers family for $8 million. The following year, administration officials announced that drug interdiction flights would resume over Colombia and Peru.
Members of a Georgia narcotics investigation team shot and killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston during a drug raid in her Atlanta home November 21, 2006.
A search warrant stating crack cocaine was being sold in her apartment allowed the officers to cut through the burglar bars protecting Johnston's home and burst through her door without identifying themselves.
Johnston, who lived alone, apparently mistook the plainclothes officers for intruders and, according to the prosecutor trying the officers, fired one shot through the door and hit nothing. The police responded, firing 39 shots, killing Johnston and apparently wounding three of their own.
Investigators did not find any crack cocaine or any evidence that drugs were being sold in the apartment. In an apparent attempt to fabricate a cover story, one of the officers, J.R. Smith, planted three bags of marijuana in the home, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Yonette Sam-Buchanan.
Those involved in the raid gave contradictory accounts of the events leading up to Johnston's death. The officers claimed the raid was executed after they received a tip from an unnamed informant who said he had purchased crack cocaine from a man in Johnston's apartment. They also said the informant had reported the apartment was equipped with a video surveillance system ' justifying the "no-knock" warrant.
However, after the shooting, the informant told a local news station that he had never even been to Johnston's home, and that police asked him to fabricate the story after the shooting. Also, investigators found no surveillance equipment in the apartment.
The FBI is investigating the incident. On April 26, 2007, two of the officers, Smith and Gregg Junnier, pleaded guilty to several charges, including manslaughter, and expect more than 10 years in prison. Another officer involved in the raid, Arthur Tesler, faces charges of violation of oath by a public officer, making false statements, and false imprisonment under color of legal process.
In January 2005, 18-year-old Rhiannon Kephart received second- and third-degree burns to her chest and stomach when police set off a stun grenade during a drug raid. The explosion also started a small fire.
Kephart, who was in bed or just waking up at the time of the raid, was a visitor in the apartment that was raided and was not a target of the investigation. The intended target of the raid — the apartment's occupant, 24-year-old Michael Johnson — had allegedly imported large quantities of marijuana into the U.S. from Canada.
Niagara Falls Police Superintendent John Chella called the incident "very unfortunate."
On May 20, 1997, 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez came home from school and hiked onto his family's isolated property on the Texas-Mexico border to graze his herd of 45 goats. Hernandez, a high-school student with no criminal record, dreamt of becoming a U.S. Marine or park ranger. Like most of the other residents of tiny Redford, Texas, Hernandez frequently carried a gun, occasionally firing it into the air to scare off animals that bothered his goats.
Unbeknownst to Hernandez or the 90 other residents of his town, U.S. Marines were stationed along the town's border to patrol for drug smugglers from Mexico. As he followed his flock of goats into the desert that day, Hernandez saw something move in the distance. Thinking it was wild dogs or a snake, he fired two shots into the air with his World War I-era shotgun. As he prepared to shoot again, the Marines who, in camouflage, were likely the source of movement shot Hernandez in the back. They waited more than 20 minutes to call for medical assistance, and Hernandez bled to death within sight of the house he grew up in.
Hernandez was the first U.S. civilian to be killed by U.S. armed forces since the 1970 political protests at Kent State University in Ohio. The practice of sending troops to patrol U.S. property for drug smugglers escalated in the '80s when President Reagan loosened the Posse Comitatus Act, which had prevented the practice. The U.S. government later settled with the Hernandez family for $1.9 million, and in 1999, the Pentagon announced that U.S. armed forces would no longer routinely patrol the U.S.-Mexico border for drugs
On the morning of October 2, 1992, a group of 30 law enforcement officers served a marijuana search warrant to Donald Scott at his Malibu, California ranch. While serving the warrant to Scott and his wife, Frances Plante, deputies shot Scott three times, killing him instantly. No marijuana was found on the property.
In September 1992, a confidential informant told Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Gary Spencer that between 3,000 and 4,000 marijuana plants were being grown on Scott's 200-acre ranch, which was nearly surrounded by state and federal parkland. However, subsequent visits by officials from park rangers, the fish and game service, and law enforcement agents conducting late-night ground surveillance revealed no marijuana on the property. Aerial surveillance by the California Air National Guard yielded inconclusive results.
Finally, only after flying over the property several times, a DEA agent spotted what he thought may have been, at most, 50 marijuana plants. The DEA agent who did not take pictures or use binoculars during his surveillance was unwilling to let his observations form the basis of a search warrant without corroboration by another witness. Deputy Spencer told the DEA agent that another confidential informant corroborated his findings, and the agent signed an affidavit that was later used to obtain a search warrant.
The confidential informant later denied having any such conversation with Spencer. In addition, the request for a search warrant made no mention of the officials who saw no marijuana when visiting the property.
On October 2, a group of 30 officers including members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, Los Angeles Police Department canine unit, National Guard, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration gathered at the edge of Scott's ranch and prepared to serve the search warrant. Two of the Sheriff's Department officers were members of the asset forfeiture unit, and researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena were there as well, possibly interested in the use of Scott's ranch in connection with missile testing over the Pacific Ocean.
After pounding on the door and calling out, "Sheriff's department. We have a search warrant. Open the door," Spencer entered Scott's house. Once inside, officers seized Plante. At this point, the story has conflicting versions. Officers swear that Plante was taken outside before the fatal shooting, but Plante says she was in the room when Scott was killed.
Regardless, at some point Scott faced Spencer and another deputy, holding a gun in front of him and pointed upward. The deputies told Scott several times to put his gun down; as he was lowering it, Spencer and the other deputy shot Scott a total of three times. It is unclear if Scott was lowering his weapon to aim at the deputies or if he was going to put it on the ground.
After the fatal shooting, Ventura County District Attorney Michael Bradbury investigated the incident. (Scott's ranch was technically in Ventura County.) Bradbury found that Spencer should never have been granted a search warrant because there was no probable cause to search Scott's property. Controversially, Bradbury also found that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department may have been motivated to raid the multi-million-dollar property in order to seize it, as evidenced by the presence of asset forfeiture officers and federal defense researchers at the time of the raid.
ironically, Frances Plante told Bradbury that Scott was against all drugs and that she had never seen him use marijuana. In January 2000, Plante won a $5 million wrongful death lawsuit against the federal government and Los Angeles County.
On June 6, 2003, a 19-year-old Alachua County, Florida, college student was raped by his cell mate as he served the first of four weekend sentences for delivering marijuana, a felony offense. (The student's name has not been released.) He had been placed in a cell with a violent offender who had been in the county jail for 11 months awaiting trial on sexual battery charges.
The two men were sharing a cell because the jail was overcrowded. Typically, inmates are classified according to offense, criminal history, gender, and/or age, among other factors, when assigned to their cells. Because certain offenders need to be isolated for safety reasons, a jail's capacity is in reality much lower than the number of beds it houses.
While the Alachua County jail could theoretically hold 920 inmates, in reality it could only accommodate an average of 782 inmates on any given day because of the need to separate certain offenders. On the day the college student was raped, the jail contained 918 inmates, far exceeding capacity. Such overcrowding had been typical in the jail since 1998.
Though the two men would normally have been separated, they were grouped together because delivering marijuana and sexual battery are both considered felonies. According to Alachua County Sheriff's Sergeant Jim Troiano, "If there was space available, absolutely we would rather keep the weekenders in a pre-designated area. But because we don't have much space available we have to do with circumstances on hand."
Suzanne According to Prosser and those close to her, she experienced excruciating pain in the following months until on Oct. 18, 2007, she took her own life. Pfel was asleep in her assisted living hospice, the Women's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), when more than 20 armed federal agents stormed into the facility and held an assault rifle to her head.
Pfeil suffers from post-polio syndrome and is paraplegic. The police officers ordered her to stand, despite the fact that her leg braces and crutches were in plain view. Pfeil tried to explain that she couldn't stand, but the agents handcuffed her behind her back and left her on the bed for several hours.
WAMM was well-known as a medical marijuana dispensary and hospice that strictly abided by California state laws regarding medical marijuana. Since the raid on WAMM, 33 patients have died.
For over 20 years, Robin Prosser, a musician and mother from Missoula, Montana, had suffered from an immunosuppressive illness similar to lupus. Her muscles stiffened, impeding her ability to move, and she suffered from chronic pain, heart trouble, nausea, and migraines. She was allergic to many prescription drugs, and others simply didn't work.
Beginning in April 2002, at age 45, Prosser staged a 60-day hunger strike to draw attention to her plight. She sought assurance from local law enforcement authorities that she could grow her own marijuana - so as to maintain a steady supply of medicine - without fear of arrest or prosecution. However, Missoula Police Chief Bob Weaver maintained that Prosser would "be busted if she grows pot and we learn about it."
In May 2004, Prosser had run out of marijuana. She e-mailed her psychologist that she planned to commit suicide because she could no longer stand to live in pain. When police arrived at her house, they found her nearly unconscious in bed after taking prescription sleeping pills that she ordered over the Internet. They also found a small quantity of marijuana and two pipes. Prosser was charged with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, charges that could have brought up to a year in prison.
Missoula Police Captain Marty Ludemann explained that "the reason we charged her is Montana does not allow the medical use of marijuana." He added that "if it happened tomorrow under the same circumstances, we would arrest her again."
In September 2004, Prosser's charges were dismissed as long as she remained "law-abiding" for nine months; the plea agreement was unclear if this meant she was allowed to use marijuana.
It seemed as though Prosser's trouble had ended when Montanans passed a medical marijuana initiative by an overwhelming 63% to 37% margin that November.
However, in the spring of 2007, federal law enforcement officers intercepted the medicine her licensed caregiver had sent her in the mail. Following the incident, Prosser had great difficulty acquiring the type and quality of medical marijuana she needed to alleviate her symptoms.
According to Prosser and those close to her, she experienced excruciating pain in the following months until on Oct. 18, 2007, she took her own life.