Dueling experts on Thursday deployed statistics to make their case in the US District Court in Chicago in a first-of-its-kind hearing to determine if phony drug stash-house stings run by federal agents dating back to the 1990s are racially biased.
More than 40 people convicted in such stings could go free if a special nine-judge panel rules that discrimination underpins the stings.
The operations run by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives typically involve agents posing as cartel couriers who talk suspects into agreeing to rob drugs that do not exist from stash houses that are also fictitious.
While the same question has come up in courts elsewhere, it is the federal trial judges in Chicago who have taken the lead in seeking an answer, and how they decide the sensitive and complex issue could determine if agencies curtail or even abandon their use nationwide.
The answer to whether the stings do or do not discriminate based on race largely hinges on competing interpretations of statistics.
Jeffrey Fagan, a defense expert who took the stand first, testified that data clearly shows blacks, and in some cases Hispanics, are disproportionately singled out for the stings.
US government witness Max Schanzenbach argued later that Fagan’s methodology was flawed.
One panelist, Judge Robert Gettleman, sounded doubtful that competing statistics could decide the question.
Highlighting the unreliability of statistics, he referred to Mark Twain’s quip about three kinds of lies: “Lies, damned lies and statistics.”
The judges on the panel each preside over 12 separate stash-house cases with 43 defendants, a dozen of whom sat in a jury box on Thursday.
Some yawned or sank in their seats as testimony strayed into mathematics and technical explanations about probabilities.
The judges chose to hear evidence simultaneously after lawyers for all 43 defendants moved for the stash-house charges to be tossed on grounds of racial bias.
How they decide — possibly in a single ruling — is expected to influence how courts nationwide deal with similar claims.
Among the panelists who were scheduled to hear a second day of testimony yesterday was Ruben Castillo. His ruling in 2013 that there is a “strong showing of potential bias” in the stings generated years of legal motions and dueling expert reports — culminating in this week’s hearings.
Castillo is the Chicago federal court’s first Hispanic chief judge.
Courts have ruled previously that proving racial bias does not necessarily require proof of explicit racist behavior, such as an official caught using racial slurs. It can sometimes be enough to point to statistical evidence that a racial group is disproportionately hurt by a policy.
Fagan noted that out of 94 stash-house defendants in the Chicago area between 2006 and 2013, 74 were black, 12 were Hispanic and just eight were white.
If the bureau’s criteria for picking targets were truly colorblind, he said, far more whites would have been snared, but government lawyers have argued it is only natural that trafficking-related stings are focused where trafficking activity is highest — in low-income areas in Chicago’s south and west.
The bureau’s expert said Fagan was wrong to assume in his analysis that hundreds of thousands of people in eight counties in and around Chicago would be willing to entertain the idea of arming themselves and storming a stash-house.
He said that assumption skewed Fagan’s findings that the 43 defendants, many of whom had previous convictions for violent crimes, were unfairly singled out.
The stings have been criticized on other grounds, including for agents’ power to arbitrarily increase the severity of charges simply by increasing the amount of non-existent drugs they tell targets are in the non-existent stash houses.
Suspects can also be charged with trying to distribute the phantom drugs, charges that carry stiff mandatory prison terms.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was