The prosecution of various Indian store owners swept up by Operation Meth Merchant has run into some problems. For one thing, they’re having a hard time demonstrating intent on the part of the store owners:
… when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to “finish up a cook,” some of them said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue.
In some cases, the language barriers seem obvious – one videotape shows cold medicine stacked next to a sign saying, “Cheek your change before you leave a counter.” Investigators footnoted court papers to explain that the clue the informants dropped most often – that they were doing “a cook” – is a “common term” meth makers use. Lawyers argue that if the courts could not be expected to understand what this meant, neither could immigrants with a limited grasp of English.
“This is not even slang language like ‘gonna,’ ‘wanna,’ ” said Malvika Patel, who spent three days in jail before being cleared this month. ” ‘Cook’ is very clear; it means food.” And in this context, she said, some of the items the government wants stores to monitor would not set off any alarms. “When I do barbecue, I have four families. I never have enough aluminum foil.” [NYT]
Honestly, even having grown up in the US and knowing something about drug culture, I don’t know whether I would have caught the word “Cook” as drug slang in this context. The deeper root of the problem here, however, is that it’s very hard to write an effective law that says that something is legal unless it’s meant to be used to nefarious purposes. Sudafed, matches, camping fuel are either legal or illegal. You shouldn’t foist the burden on a convenience store owner to figure out how such common items will be used.
Another problem was that the prosecutors kept mixing up the different (unrelated) Patels involved:
Prosecutors have had to drop charges against one defendant they misidentified, presuming that the Indian woman inside the store must be the same Indian woman whose name appeared on the registration for a van parked outside, and lawyers have gathered evidence arguing that another defendant is the wrong Patel. [NYT]Continue reading
