The whole blind mule thing has always pissed me off. At the midpoint of my prosecutorial career, when I was in a senior unit but still pulled some meat-and-potatoes cases, I got a case of an old Vietnamese man caught at LAX with a bunch of decorative slippers with heroin in the soles. /1
I really love the Court’s logic in this. “Look he didn’t testify that ALL Belgians is criminals. He just said that MOST Belgians is criminals. So it’s not, whatayacallit, discriminatory.”
/2 There was zero extrinsic evidence that he knew the drugs were there. No evasive tactics, no reports of nervousness or anything, no incriminating statements. They just waved him to secondary, found these slippers, found the heroin concealed in the soles, charged him.
/3 My position was that sure, maybe he knew, but I wasn’t confident he knew and I didn’t feel good getting him a 10 year mandatory minimum so he could die in prison. DEA’s position was that all mules know that they are carrying drugs; there’s no such thing as a blind mule; amen.
/4 I felt this was closer to a religious or cultural belief on the DEA‘S behalf than a fact. Eventually I persuaded office leadership that we shouldn’t take cases with NO evidence of knowledge beyond the presumption that a mule knows they are carrying. There are plenty of cases with evidence.
/6 Also my ability to trust DEA agents’ worldviews uncritically did not survive contact with DEA agents, who were frequently unsupervised manchildren you wouldn’t trust to watch your dog Memorial Day weekend.
Not ALWAYS though. Just OFTEN.
My uncle is a retired Special Forces sergeant major. 27 years in and he said the only group he trained with that made him nervous was the DEA. He called them teenagers with guns and no adult supervision.
Umm, if, that's the only group that made him nervous, I'd be concerned. SF has some real psychos that fit his description and should make him nervous too. I might have been one of them. 🙃
My second-favorite No Shit story: at Sniper school, SF guys taught a class on "how to kill a man with an orange". The point of this story-
"...SF guys are nuts?"
"No. If you see Huey with a bag of oranges, go the other fucking way."
My experience with the DEA deciding how regulations apply:
DEA: Who is higher ranking? Because whoever he is, his interpretation of the rules is correct no it doesn't matter how we decided last time then the important person was different
all of the LEOs in DHS are basically cursed and are the bottom rung on capabilities (though Bureau of Prisons Correctional Officers might be the actual bottom rung. idk)
I haven't interacted with many FBI folks. The very few I have were honestly some of the smartest law enforcement people I got to work with. But this was an admittedly small sample which included people who engineered a large and complex software system as a hobby.
my understanding is that FBI and CIA are the top tier LEOs and get the pick of the litter of whoever applies. Those who can't hack it or don't qualify with them move down the LEO tier list as their standards get lower and lower
