Terrific review of some ugly realities of stash-house stings

I hope readers recall the series of posts from a few years ago authored by Alison Siegler, Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the University of Chicago Law School's Federal Criminal Justice Clinic, concerning the extraordinary litigation her clinic has done in response to so-called "stash house stings" in which federal agents lure defendants into seeking to rob a (non-existent) drug stash-house.  Those posts (which are linked below with a few others) provides one look at one ugly part of the drug war represented by stash-house sting.  And now Rachel Poser has this great lengthy article in the newest issue of The New Yorker discussing the stash house sting story as part of the broader realities of undercover law enforcement operations.

The article is worth a full read, and its title highlights its themes: "Stash-House Stings Carry Real Penalties for Fake Crimes; The undercover operations seem like entrapment, but their targets can receive long sentences — sometimes even harsher than those for genuine crimes."  Here is a small excerpt: 

In the past four decades, sting operations of all types have become a major part of law enforcement in the United States, and stash-house stings are perhaps the most extreme example of this trend, because of the harsh penalties they carry. They can result in longer sentences than real crimes of a similar nature....  No judge is required to sign a warrant, and law-enforcement officials do not have to provide any evidence that a person is already engaged in criminal activity before initiating an undercover investigation....

The A.T.F. claims that stash-house stings catch established crews who already have the means to commit armed robbery. “If we wanted to go out and cast a wide net, we could do one of these a week — that’s not what we want to do,” an agent said in 2014, according to the Los Angeles Times.  “This technique is designed to take trigger-pullers off the streets.” Through the years, the A.T.F. has targeted many men with long and violent criminal histories, some of whom have shown up on the day of the robbery armed with assault rifles and bulletproof vests....

Nevertheless, the agency has also ensnared low-level offenders, and even people with no criminal records.  I reviewed thousands of pages of court transcripts from more than a dozen stash-house cases and found that many of the so-called crews were haphazard groups of family members, acquaintances, or strangers thrown together at the last minute, as targets scrambled to find willing participants. Suspects in these cases frequently asked the undercover agents for help distributing cocaine or obtaining guns....

As large numbers of stash-house cases made their way to court, some judges began to voice concern about the A.T.F.’s tactics.  “In this era of mass incarceration, in which we already lock up more of our population than any other nation on Earth,” Stephen Reinhardt, a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote in 2014, “it is especially curious that the government feels compelled to invent fake crimes and imprison people for long periods of time for agreeing to participate in them.”  But the difficulty of proving entrapment, combined with mandatory minimums for drugs, left judges little choice but to affirm the convictions.  “You guys are dragging half a million dollars through a poor neighborhood,” William Fletcher, another Ninth Circuit judge, said the same year.  “Now, the law’s the law and I’m going to follow it, but I think you guys are making a mistake.”

Some prior related posts:

• Deep dive into litigation over Chicago “Stash House Stings”
• Guest post series on Chicago "stash-house sting" litigation: Part 1 on "Sentencing Victories"
• Guest post series on Chicago "stash-house sting" litigation: Part 2 on "Legal Victories"
• Guest post series on Chicago "stash-house sting" litigation: Part 3 on "A Path for Future Litigation" 
• Another update on Chicago "stash-house sting" litigation showcasing feds ugly drug war tactics