The ATF continues to struggle in the aftermath of its moronic Fast and Furious operation where they allowed powerful weapons to walk into the hands of gangs. One of those guns led to the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. However, in true lunacy, a more recent operation would seem to demand similar ridicule. In Milwaukee, ATF agents ran an operation using Chauncey Wright, a brain-damaged 28-year-old man with a low IQ in the 50s to set up gun and drug deals. They then shutdown the operation and, you guessed it, they arrested Wright.
Wright approached ATF agents passing out fliers in a parking lot and was given a job. For six months, the ATF paid Wright with cigarettes, gifts, and money to get him to promote “Fearless Distributing” by handing out fliers on his bike around town. Wright was not aware that this was just a front by U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The store sold legitimate items but had catalogues with guns. Wright was reportedly told that the store did not sell guns, but bought them.
I have represented individuals with low IQ including one with a 51 IQ. They are treated as disabled in most states. The record shows ATF agents manipulating Wright in a way that shocks the conscience. In the meantime, ATF agents showed incredible incompetence in losing ATF guns, including a machine gun, to theft as well as a ballistic shield. They also reportedly left behind sensitive documents after they shut down the operation.
The 10-month operation resulted in charges against about 30 people for largely minor drug offenses. Agents pushed Wright to get drugs and guns. He sold the agents cocaine in March 2012 and ecstasy a few months later. He then started to bring them guns. After a break-in led to the loss of the guns, Wright was indicted on seven drug and gun counts with a maximum of life in prison. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Wright faces about four years “mildly mentally retarded.” The plea bargain had to be read to Wright because he cannot read beyond a kindergarten level.
With mostly low-level charges to show for the operation and the loss of weapons, Wright’s arrest seems particularly pathetic.
Source: JSOnline
The military men and women are committing suicide because what they are doing and can not escape. These cops can quit and they continue to disgrace themselves.
I interviewed w/ the ATF back in the 70’s. But, they were just too cowboyish for me. They were cowboyish in Waco in the 90’s and are cowboyish today. It’s fairly common knowledge in Fed law enforcement circles.
As far as I know, the judge in that case continued on until he either retired or died. Last I heard, the defense attorney in that case ran for judge when the vacancy came, winning the election.
Reblogged this on euzicasa and commented:
JUst like in movies!
One heck of a story OS. That judge should have been shown the door right then.
OS:
that is just disgusting. Was the judge sanctioned? He should have been removed from the bench for something like that.
How do you tell if someone has a low IQ vs. being ignorant? Lets say a child with the potential for a high IQ stops learning in say 2nd grade, and you get hold of him 30 years later for an IQ test; does IQ measure knowledge alone or can you measure potential?
Otteray, that is disturbing. It reminds me of the PA judge who was sentencing kids for profit. The dark side in me believes judges such as that should be tried for corrupt and be executed if convicted.
Bron,
I could write many stories of cases I worked on over the years that were not much different. One in particular sticks in my craw. The case happened in Mississippi. The defendant was a black woman who had gotten a job at a nursing home as a nurse’s aide. That was in the days before nurse’s aides became CNAs and had to take a state certification test.
She was told to bathe an elderly lady, so ran the hot water as she was instructed and set the patient down in the water. This woman was not used to running water. She had spent her entire life living out in the country where they got their water from a well. She did what she was told and ran the hot water. The octogenarian patient was scalded to death.
The aide was charged with murder by the local DA. I examined the defendant on order of the Court. I found she had an IQ of 44. She was illiterate, which came as no surprise. She was functional enough that she knew how to make a few simple dishes of country food, such as cornbread and turnip greens, which is what she fed her family.
When my associate, a psychiatrist, and I attended the competency to stand trial hearing, we both told the Court she was not competent and would never be competent. The judge was livid. He ordered my colleague and myself to take her back to the psychiatric hospital and gave us thirty days to restore her to competency, or we would both be cited for contempt.
We brought the defendant back to the hospital, where we mulled over what to do. What the judge did not know was my psychiatrist friend is also an attorney. He is a polymath. They could not keep him busy enough in medical school, so he went to law school at the same time. Two months after he completed his residency in psychiatry, he took and passed the bar exam. To make a long story short, the two of us worked on a brief to present to the court. It contained both medical and legal documentation as to the unreasonableness of the Judge’s order. One case we cited was Jackson v. Indiana (406 U.S. 715 (1972)), which was a fairly recent decision at that time. My friend had filed his brief with the court clerk in a timely manner.
When we returned to court thirty days later as ordered, the judge was even more furious. At one point, I thought he was going to have a stroke; his face turned a color of purple not often seen in nature.
Hizzoner threatened us with contempt for for, “Getting that goddamned ACLU to write the brief.” He had trouble wrapping his head around the fact that a psychiatrist and psychologist had written it, and didn’t want to believe it. The judge continued the case, but the charges were eventually dropped.
The defense attorney in the case told us he had it on good authority that the judge was a business partner with the guy who owned the nursing home. If the woman were convicted of either manslaughter or murder, it would cut the nursing home civil liability exposure.
Sometimes Lady Justice has a hidden agenda.
This is disgusting. How do those involved, those who supervise, and those who employed these creeps sleep at night knowing what they did to this person. Oh, wait, we employed them. Shame on us for allowing our government to become so corrupt.
OS:
an IQ of 57? how could the judge convict? Did the judge have an IQ of 56 and was jealous?
With an IQ that low, the kid was barely able to dress himself. That just sounds so wrong. Although maybe if they sent him to a facility for the mentally challanged he might be taken care of and looked after.
I have a friend who works at one of those facilities and it sounds like the residents get good care. Although the fathers usually abandon the family and the mother is left alone to care for her child. The stories my friend tells are heart wrenching.
It is time to start holding our government accountable for actions like these. By that I mean arrest them, charge them and imprison them.
We increase sentences against people whose ‘victim'( and i use victim loosely) are law enforcement officers.
Well I say its high time to make mandatory sentencing guidelines that DOUBLE any sentence against law enforcement or government workers for crimes involving their government work. If a couple is found guilty of battery/brutality, take him and throw him in prison with additional penalties that require unpardonable/parole mandatory time
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/01/1182672/-Our-Autistic-Son-was-Handcuffed-and-Arrested-in-School-We-Were-Not-Notified
Our Autistic Son was Handcuffed and Arrested in School, We Were Not Notified
Note: Please sign this petition to help my son, and to halt the abuse of special education students in the school district referenced in this diary.
In December, 2012, a teenager went to his public school, much like any other day. The boy was an autistic special education student, who is significantly learning disabled and on a regimen of prescription medications for a number of psychiatric disorders. That day, the boy’s parents began to worry when he did not come home after school.
What the parents did not know was that early on that morning, armed police officers had entered the boy’s classroom, handcuffed him, and had taken him away to be interrogated without a call to his parents or any attorney, then locked up for several days.
The boy is our son.
The police action at the school was part of a “sting operation”, which was secretly brought into local school district classrooms, with the assistance of key school administrators. Their goal was “identifying and purchasing illegal drugs from persons dealing”.
The problem is, our son is not and never was a drug dealer.
There were plenty of news articles about how the sheriff’s department heroically took down the 22-student “drug ring, with a picture of a kid being led away in handcuffs. The kid in the picture is our son.
And of course, the district was happy to tout their zero tolerance policy to the press, though zero tolerance has its fair share of critics, especially as relates to minorities and students with disabilities.
read rest at link
Most everyone in the ATF/Law enforcement involved in this should go to prison for this. I am not even kidding.
What raff said. With that level of mental impairment, this can only be viewed as entrapment. I bet these agents are the kind of guys who thought it was funny to stuff the disabled kids in to lockers in high school. Or in the words of the Waco Kid, “What did you expect? ‘Welcome, sonny’? ‘Make yourself at home’? ‘Marry my daughter’? You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”
What shocks the conscience even more is the fact this happens all the time. I worked on a case several years ago where the defendant was a “mule” for his psychopath cousin. The defendant was a young man in his early 20s, had an IQ of 57, and was illiterate. To hear the US Attorney at the sentencing hearing tell it, the kid must have been a combination of Pablo Escobar and Jesse James. Under the mandatory sentencing guidelines, the Federal judge gave him over 200 months.
That hit two of the things that tick me off. Excessive sentences under the guidelines, and prosecution of the mentally incompetent to a degree that shocks the conscience.
East broadway long beach,
Ditto….
In their defense it would be hard to set up an illegal gun deal and not have to work with brain damaged people.
Meanwhile, law enforcement seems to be missing the larger picture while trying desperately to get some prety useless minor convictions.
These are the same people that will be enforcing any new gun laws Congress passes.
ATF, is a ‘Brain damaged organisation’……………
Disgusting. There are some ATF agents and supervisors who should be serving time instead of Mr. Wright!