In continuing to report on the apparent injustice in the case of Cory Maye, Radley Balko reminds us of the ongoing war on our civil liberties in the name of the War on (Some) Drugs:

On my first day in Prentiss I met Debra Brooks, a 28-year-old white woman who says that in March 2004, officers from the Task Force raided her home after a confidential informant said she and her family were running a meth lab inside.

At around midnight, police kicked down her two outside doors without first announcing themselves, then stormed her home when her boyfriend opened the inner door to see what what going on. They trained their guns on the three young children inside, still in their beds, and held Brooks in a bedroom at gunpoint while they searched the house for contraband. They found no drugs, or evidence of meth manufacture. They did find a bong, brand new and unused, and a bottle of vodka, illegal in dry Lawrence County (Lawrence is adjacent to Jefferson Davis County). Police never produced a search warrant.

Police arrested Brooks’ boyfriend at the time, Landas Pate, and her brother, James Wesmorland. Pate would be held in prison for several months before his family could post bond. Wesmorland’s family couldn’t make the $40,000 bond. So he was held in the Lawrence County jail for 280 days, until December 2004. Remarkably, on December 30 of that year, Wesmorland was released. No charges. No explanation. He had been held on suspicion of selling meth and pills within 1,500 feet of a church. Police told him they had video surveillance of these alleged sales. They never showed him any video.