Chicago US attorney drops most serious stash-house sting charges against 27 defendants
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago has dropped drug conspiracy charges against 27 defendants charged in stash-house stings, in which undercover officers lead targets to believe they are plotting to rob a drug stash house.
The controversial stings can result in heavy penalties because the defendants believe a large amount of drugs are kept in the homes they planned to rob, the Chicago Tribune and the Associated Press report. Critics said the ruse by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives amounted to entrapment and targeted mostly minorities.
Federal prosecutors dropped conspiracy charges against 27 out of 33 suspects, but left in place robbery and weapons charges that carry lighter sentences, the stories say. A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon refused comment on the dismissals.
The charges were dropped after the en banc Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the stash-house conviction of a suburban man, Leslie Mayfield, because he was not allowed to argue entrapment. In a prior panel opinion in the case, then-dissenting Judge Richard Posner said the defendant, who had been working “an honest job,” should have been entitled to submit the defense to jurors.
In that 2012 opinion, Posner said stash-house stings may hinder rather than help the war on drugs.
“The effect of a fictitious stash house sting, when the person stung is, unlike Mayfield, a real stash house robber, is therefore to make stash houses more secure by reducing the likelihood of their being robbed,” he wrote. “A sting both eliminates one potential stash house robber (unless the defendant was entrapped) and deters other defendants from joining stash house robberies, since they may turn out to be stings.”
Hat tip to ISBA Daily Legal News.
