And what makes a man so desperate? Why, fear of the Inquisitors, of course - who hold the power to take
his life or give a portion of it back, if he “cooperates.”

Using fear of punishment to get people to informUnless, therefore, a man had in him the rare stuff of a
real martyr, he meekly acknowledged that he was a heretic, and he abjured the heresy. He was then required to
denounce others, or “name his accomplices.” If he thus confessed his heresy and named a few others, he merely
got a heavy penance… If he persisted in denying that he was a heretic, or refused to name others,
he was taken into the next room.
Zulima Buitrago, a single mother of two young children, was convicted for conspiracy to distribute cocaine.
A friend's husband asked to use her garage to repair his truck. While there, he conducted a drug deal.
Facing a life sentence unless he could implicate someone else, the man told police Buitrago had been present
at the deal, where 350 kilos of cocaine had changed hands. Buitrago received a 24-year sentence,
though there was not a shred of evidence - neither drugs nor money - to support the man's claim that
Buitrago had been involved in a drug sale. For some informants, of course, the motive is gold, not terror.

Using rewards to encourage informing

To all who would “take up arms,” as [Pope Alexander III] said, against [heretics] he promised two years'
remission of penance and even greater privileges.
Oscar Moncoda is serving 12½ years on drug charges, with the sole evidence against him being the
testimony of an informant who was paid $80,000 for his testimony. He is not alone.

Traditionally, either fear of punishment or small payoffs have been used to get cooperation. But with law
enforcement agencies becoming as rich as the Medieval Church with forfeiture money, they are now paying
stunning sums. The street crook who still settles for $100 for selling his friends is a fool. And what would you do
if you were a marginal type, always broke, who could “earn” several years' income in one swoop, simply
by lying about someone you didn't care about or didn't even know?
But why on earth would a jury of 12 sensible people convict on such an absence of evidence?

Juries convicting on next to no evidence

Meantime the Inquisitors…had to choose an advisory council of “good and experienced men”…and come to
a decision only in conjunction with these.
A most beneficent provision, says the Jesuit! Actually the beginning of the jury-system in Europe,
says the Canon! But who were these men, and what did they do? They were, as a rule, mostly priests and monks,
with a few very orthodox laymen. In a few places quite a number of local pious lawyers - the decree stipulated
that they must be “zealous for the faith”… The “jury” never hampered the Inquisitors.

Kevin B. Zeese, President, Common Sense for Drug Policy,7 writes of the aftermath
of the Esequiel Hernandez shooting:

A grand jury was convened [to explore charges against the Marines], but this made the injustice worse.
The grand jury was at best a mockery. It included the Assistant Sector Chief of the Border Patrol who was
part of the administration that asked the Marines to come to the border and one of the people responsible for their
supervision. It also included the wife of a Border Patrol officer, a Border Patrol retiree, and two Customs Officers.
The judge found no conflict of interest and District Attorney Valadez said it was good to have people
on the jury who “knew how to get things done.”

Jeffrey Steinborn, a Seattle attorney who has been called “The Public's Defender,” commented on why
juries are willing to convict in drug cases when the only evidence is the word of an informant, whose integrity
may be completely compromised.

The people who make it on a jury are the ones who lie and conceal their real agendas. They're lying because
they're just dying to pass judgment on people - and usually it's that minority - that nigger, that spic, however
they think of it…. We've been made to fear the black man and his drugs or the Mexican and his drugs, the
poor woman who smokes crack and ignores her child. Once you put them in that moral category, where
they don't get the same treatment as your brother, the government can do anything to them.8

“On the rare occasion we win a case,” says Steinborn, “[The informant with something to gain] is what the
juries seem to choke on. But the prosecutor says, 'Well, you know you're not going to get choir boys infiltrating
this scum, you're not going to get priests infiltrating this scum.'” As another attorney, Terrance Geoghegan
of Ventura, California, puts it, “We joke that the police wouldn't have arrested someone if he weren't guilty.
But around here, people actually believe that.”

Of course in any Inquisition - conducted by the powerful for the interests of the powerful -
there is a different standard for the sons of the powerful.

The privileged get off lightly

There were two kinds of prisons, strict and less strict. Rich heretics generally got the latter, and money
will buy comforts and privileges in most places. But [even] they have, for a “heresy” which they have abjured, if it
ever existed, lost all their property, seen wife and children reduced to beggary, and been imprisoned for life.
Lonnie Lundy is serving life in prison without possibility of parole. He was never found with drugs, drug money,
drug paraphernalia or anything else. His sentence is based on the word of one man (an employee he
had fired years earlier), who later bitterly recanted, saying his testimony was concocted by the prosecution team.

Lundy's father contacted his U.S. Senator, Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), seeking help, but the Senator responded,
“I'm sorry that your family has to go through this ordeal… But, any person who is caught with drugs [sic] should
spend the rest of their life in prison. I have no sympathy for them.”

A few months later, in July 1998, Senator Shelby's son Claude landed at Atlanta's Hartfield Airport from
London carrying 13.8 grams of hashish. Claude Shelby was also arrested. He received a misdemeanor possession
charge and a $500 administrative fine. Senator Shelby later refused to respond to letters from Lonnie Lundy's father.

Continue on to Prt 4