In September it was revealed that Blackwater had been "tapped" by the Pentagon's Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office to compete for a share of a five-year, $15 billion budget "to fight terrorists with drug-trade ties." According to the Army Times, the contract "could include antidrug technologies and equipment, special vehicles and aircraft, communications, security training, pilot training, geographic information systems and in-field support." A spokesperson for another company bidding for the work said that "80 percent of the work will be overseas." As Richard Douglas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, explained, "The fact is, we use Blackwater to do a lot of our training of counternarcotics police in Afghanistan. I have to say that Blackwater has done a very good job."

It was from this unlikely setting, the United States alleged, that Ann Colomb and three of her four sons ran one of the largest crack cocaine operations in Louisiana. Over the course of a decade, prosecutors said, the Colombs bought $15 million in illicit drugs with a street value of more than $70 million. Judging solely from the indictments, the government's case seemed formidable: a trail of police reports throughout the 1990s accusing the Colomb boys of possessing or selling drugs; a 2001 raid on the Colomb home that turned up 72 grams of crack, a Titan .25-caliber pistol, and a rifle; and more than 30 prison informants who were prepared to testify that they had sold crack to one or more members of the Colomb family. In 2006 a jury in Lafayette, Louisiana, convicted the African-American family on federal drug conspiracy charges. Ann and her sons served almost four months in a federal prison while awaiting their sentences, which would likely have ranged from 10 years to life.

But in the ensuing months, the government's case unraveled, exposing some unsettling truths about the way jailhouse informants are used in America's courtrooms. In December 2006, all charges against the family were dismissed. The federal judge who presided over the trial was so upset about what happened in his courtroom that he has since taken the rare step of speaking out about it publicly.

The legal fiasco was partly attributable to familiar themes of racism and overly aggressive prosecution. But Ann and James Colomb the Colomb story is mostly about the war on drugs. It shows how the absurd incentives created by the unaccountable use of shady drug informants by police and prosecutors can quickly make innocent people look very guilty.

The case loomed over the family for more than five years. It wrecked their finances. The Colombs' son Danny was convicted shortly after learning that his wife Elizabeth was expecting their first child. He spiraled into severe depression while incarcerated. He and Elizabeth say they spent their entire savings on attorney's fees. Ann Colomb had a serious diabetic attack in prison. She too spent her savings on her defense.

Denver's Marijuana Review Panel meets today to discuss an increase in arrests and citations after citizens passed two ballot initiatives, including one that directed city officials to make marijuana their lowest law enforcement priority.

The meeting is at 3:30 p.m. in the third-floor law library of the Denver City and County Building.

Mason Tvert, a proponent of the marijuana initiatives, said that 1,600 adults faced charges of misdemeanor marijuana possession in 2007, an increase of 18 percent from 2006, an increase of 36 percent from 2005 and an increase of approximately 50 percent from 2004.

"Watch out, you're talking to a notorious ex-con." Wrapped in a sharp Middle Georgia twang, Tucker's voice betrays a suppressed smile. The slight, balding, 50-year-old Atlantan is hardly an intimidating figure.

But he's only half-kidding. Nearly a decade ago, he was sent to prison as a result of a once-infamous federal drug case that sparked national outrage for its rough interpretation of justice.

In the spring of 1994, the Tucker family received lengthy prison sentences -- 10 years for Steve, 16 years for his older brother Gary, and 10 years for his brother's wife, Joanne -- without possibility of parole, for the curiously worded federal crime of "conspiracy to manufacture marijuana."

...

So perhaps Gary Tucker shouldn't have been surprised one day in the early weeks of 1992 when DEA Special Agent Kevin McLaughlin dropped by Southern Lights with an offer its owner wasn't expected to refuse. The feds would be much obliged, McLaughlin explained, if he'd let them install hidden cameras in the store so they could snoop on his customers. If he didn't, no effort would be spared in shutting down his 4-year-old business.

The conversation lasted probably all of five minutes, but its outcome would set into motion forces the Tuckers could scarcely imagine.

Gary would later tell his family that when he told McLaughlin to get lost, the agent "said they'd get him somehow," recalls his mother, Doris Gore.

Still disgusted by the idea of being pressured into being a government spy, Steve has never second-guessed his brother's response. "This isn't Nazi Germany," he says.

...

Last December, five days after Steve was released from the halfway house where he'd spent the last few months of his sentence, Gary died of cancer at Emory Hospital.

He had been sick for a nearly a year, but prison officials refused to take his illness seriously until it was too late, his mother says.

"They'd give him an aspirin and send him back to his cell until he'd pass out and then they'd take him to the hospital," Gore says.

Steve was able to see Gary toward the end, but Joanne -- who'd been transferred from a Connecticut woman's prison to a Macon halfway house -- wasn't allowed to visit her husband the week before he died.

The diagnosis was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer closely associated with exposure to Agent Orange, the deadly herbicide used in Vietnam. It would seem Gary's government had succeeded in killing him after all.

...

The thing about federal prison that made the biggest impression on Steve was how many inmates were much like himself: small-time, non-violent offenders serving big-time sentences for reasons that made little sense.

"Even if I was guilty, 10 years seems excessive when there were bank robbers who were in there for two or three years, and I got 10 years for selling light bulbs," he says, his voice rising as if framing a question.

Ryan Frederick was arraigned today. He was charged with first-degree murder, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and . . . simple possession of marijuana.

That’s right. Though police still haven’t told us how much marijuana they found, it wasn’t enough to charge Frederick with anything more than a misdemeanor. For a misdemeanor, they broke down his door, a cop is dead, and a 28-year-old guy’s life is ruined. Looks like the informant mistook Frederick’s gardening hobby for an elaborate marijuana growing operation, and those Japanese maple trees for marijuana plants.

Sure the guy breaking into his home in the middle of the night was a cop, but who would stop to ask questions?

These no-knock raids need to stop.