Radley Balko says:
My Reason feature on the wrongful imprisonment of an entire family is now available online.
It's the long, sordid story of an the Colomb family in Louisiana, wrongly convicted on federal drug conspiracy charges.
The family was eventually released after several federal prisoners came forwarded alleging a massive perjury and information sharing network in the federal prison system.
Problem is, many of the same jailhouse snitches who lied in the Colomb case are still being used in other federal cases.
And nothing has been done about the underlying incentive structure that gives rise to these problems in the first place.
The Colombs live on a mostly black street in a mostly white section of this mostly segregated town of 4,700 in Acadia Parish–the heart of Cajun country. James Colomb spent the bulk of his career working in an oil field, then was injured. The family's sole source of income now is his disability check. Ann Colomb–"Miss Ann" to those who know her–is a homemaker.
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. ButAnn 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.
