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.

I always love hearing about these types of stories. Its even more hilarious when you hear how law enforcement justifies these types of injusticies. There rational is always, "Oh well, he knows he probably did something wrong at some point in his life and we just couldn't prove it or catch him at the time, so he probably really ended up deserving it anyways."

In the eyes of the executive branch we are all suspects. They want cameras on every street corner, biometrics scans of everyones finger prints, and DNA evidence on file for everyone at birth. All so they can quickly and conveniently rule out the suspects when they believe there is a crime and need to find someone to punish. The only problem is that they think we are all considered suspects. Whatever happened to being innocent till proven guilty?