Oklahoma Criminal Defense Blog

When talk turned to letting prison inmates out early with ankle monitors, who thought about losing money?  Apparently, the people who operate the private prisons who lose inmates from such a program.

On the first day of this month, the Department of Corrections implemented a new statute, HB 2131, that released on GPS monitoring those inmates convicted of non-violent crimes who were serving a sentence of less than five years and have only ninety days of their sentence left to serve.  The only recent change in the law is that it makes eligible those who have ninety days left on their sentences rather than 180 days.

The largest for-profit provider of halfway houses in the state of Oklahoma was so concerned about losing this business that they met with officials of the Department of Corrections, then met with the governor and the Speaker of the House, who was the author of HB 2131.  Avalon Correctional Services explained their concern, with a straight face as just a concern for public safety.  Speaker Steele explained that Avalon met with him just to be sure he understood how good their programs are.

The company has seen a big drop in its halfway house populations.  Their halfway house in Tulsa was only 60 percent to capacity this October versus 97 of capacity in October, 2010.  Since Department of Corrections pays Avalon $33.75 per day per inmate, the total drop could reach $120,000 per month for only one of the Avalon facilities.

The Department of Corrections claims to have 10 years of studies that show this type of release works.  The Department’s director, Justin Jones, said he got an avalanche of telephone calls for people concerned that hundreds of inmates would be released under the new law.  But, in fact, fewer than 170 inmates were released early for the GPS monitoring.

The new law is aimed at reducing the terrific costs of housing inmates in times of budget shortfalls.  It did not change who is eligible; it just changed time frame of remaining sentence from 180 days to 90 days.

The Department of Corrections claims this program has a 90 percent success rate for women and an 87 percent success rate for male inmates.   This is better than any of the specialty programs, like drug court or community sentencing, both of which are excellent programs with excellent track records.

Avalon helped address the state’s budget shortfalls two years ago when it agreed to accept a 5 ½ percent decrease in the per diem rate Department of Corrections paid for halfway house occupants.   The department budget fell from $503 million in 2010 to $462 this year.

The computers devices in cars made today retain a lot of data.  The “event date recorder,” known as the “EDR,” is a computer module that stores a lot of data about a vehicle’s driving.  It is compared to the “black box” carried by airliners.  They are planted in 85% of American vehicles today.  EDRs are not all alike, but they are capable of recording brake application, steering, speed at time of impact when there has been a crash. Incidentally, it can record whether driver and passenger were wearing their seatbelts.

The EDRs was designed to collect data so federal safety standards could be improved, but more and more now, the EDRs have become exhibits in the courtroom when a crime is alleged or serious accident occurs.

New rules for EDRs will take effect next year from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.  The new regulations will require the devices record and preserve a certain minimum of crash data, fifteen categories of data, including pre-crash speed, engine throttle, changes in forward velocity and the deployment of the airbags.  The regulations will not require the installation of EDRs

Judges in the many various state and federal courts vary in their willingness to allow electronic devices into evidence. Identification of the device, verifications and chain of custody can tip the decision on admissibility.  Often judges may be less willing to admit something as the judge is less familiar with it, perhaps arguably either afraid of it or enraptured by it.

Such pieces of electronic data should be used more in the courtroom to give evidence of the facts, according to their advocates.  They want to make it easier to authenticate such electronic articles, which are sometimes challenged in the courtroom because they do not conform to the rules of evidence.  Of course, the advocates are willing to change the rules of evidence to make it easier to get them into evidence.

Not so fast, say the skeptics.   These little electronic treasures may abound in data, but what do we know about how that data got there, and therefore, how reliable is that data?  They should be treated as hearsay evidence and excluded from evidence as a default unless their reliability can be shown.

These little jewels are not infallible, passive receptacles of fact and incorruptible testifiers to those facts, say the skeptics.  Instead, they view electronic devices as fundamentally manipulable to the designer’s wishes.  Whatever the creator put in the device, so it will carry a bias forever.  The creator of the device makes it subject to certain software that modifies, colors, and skews production of data according to some agenda.  Without complete disclosure of that software, no one can know that agenda or what data is being presented.  Usually, that is where a wall goes up, and the owners/designers of the electronic device claims propriety secrecy.  Certainly, that is common in breath analysis machines when criminal defense lawyers demand how certain results are produced.  Prosecutors (usually hiding behind the manufacturers) never want to produce such explanations, and only very rarely do courts demand they produce them.

With all the traffic lights there are, who’s to say how many times people run red lights?  Since running red lights is a safety hazard, unattended cameras on poles have been installed: surveillance cameras.  When a car runs a red light, the camera takes a photo, and a copy of the photo along with a citation is mailed to the registered owner of the vehicle.  This should make drivers less willing to run red lights, so public safety should be the the winner.

But public safety is not the reason a lot of these cameras are installed.  It’s revenue.  The cameras are installed by vendors who sell them to municipalities.  However, the cameras cost to install, so the camera vendors make this deal with the cities: let us install the cameras for free and we will split the revenues derived in a 50-50 split.  The cities thus pay nothing and get pure profit.  So profit can be the dominating motive for installation of the cameras.

Some cities have allowed violators to avoid a conviction for running the red light if the drivers will complete driving school. Obviously, the idea is to better educate drivers and inspire safety in the city’s drivers.  But when the city offered that driving school option in Tempe, Arizona, the camera vendor, a company named Redflex, filed suit against the city for $1.3 million for breach of its contract.

Conventional wisdom about running traffic lights is that a longer yellow light is a factor that can make things safer.  But longer yellow lights produce fewer violations and less revenue.   So Bell Gardens, California, has just agreed to a contract with Redflex that penalizes the city if it ever changes the length of the yellow lights.  Glassboro, N.J. shortened its lights as well, and, when the mayor of a neighboring municipality got a ticket for running a red light, the fact came to light that Glassboro had shortened their yellow lights to less than the 4 second minimum recommended by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The downturn in the economy has driven municipal officers to seek more revenue.  Understanding that motive does not make it okay for municipal officials to disregard the best interests of their citizens.  It may be a trend, as New York City and Washington, D.C. intend to increase the number of their surveillance cameras.  But maybe it’s not a trend, since nine states and several cities, including Houston and Los Angeles, have prohibited any of these cameras.

Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois, has had his two jury trials in federal court for bribery and corruption.  Now federal prosecutors are mopping up with some of the others caught in the investigation of Blagojevich.  Now it’s William Cellini’s turn.

Cellini is a power broker in Illinois state government.  His investment company, Capri,  made $220 million doing business with the state Teacher’s Retirement System.  And that connection is what allegedly brought him into a scheme to extort a campaign contribution to the Blagojevich campaign coffers.  The Blagojevich team knew how important it was for Cellini to maintain his dealings with Teacher’s Retirement System.

Cellini is being prosecuted for delivering a message to someone already given the message, Hollywood producer Thomas Rosenberg.  Rosenberg had an investment deal with the Teacher’s Retirement System until he got a visit from Antoin Rezko and Christopher Kelly.  Rezko and Kelly told Rosenberg his deal was dead unless made a $1.5 million contribution to Blagojevich.
Rosenberg then turned to an old friend whom he figured could enlighten and advise him.  He turned to Cellini.  But Cellini told him the only way to get his deal done was to make the contribution.  The government accuses Cellini of conspiracy in that extortion scheme, but the evidence so far described omits a critical link.  Granted Cellini had a motive to protect his connection with the Teacher’s Retirement, but Cellini did not deliver any bribe, threat, or (arguably) any message.  Rosenberg plainly said on cross examination by Cellin’s criminal defense lawyer that Cellini never asked for the contribution.  What Rosenberg said could have been simply a statement of fact, that Cellini believed, his opinion was that Rosenberg’s deal was finished unless he made the contribution.

But the government plugged that hole with the testimony of an inside witness.  Stuart Levine was charged and pled guilty to being part of this conspiracy.  He testified that Cellini agreed to approach Rosenberg, and that both Levine and Cellini were doing so to protect their influence with the Teacher’s Retirement System.  Certainly Levine’s testimony is suspect because he is cooperating with the government to lessen his sentences, so he has a motive to lie, fudge, create or enhance his testimony to make himself more valuable to the government.  As usual, critical facts in a trial hinge on the credibility of a witness.

A federal jury brought back verdicts in Alabama recently on an indictment charging 39 counts against 9 defendants with bribery.  After a two-year investigation by the F.B.I, two months of jury trial with evidence that included thousands of tape-recorded telephone conversations, and finally by a week of jury deliberations, the prosecution score was zero.

No one was convicted: All acquittals and mistrials.  The main target, Milton McGregor, was found not guilty on three counts and got a hung jury on 14 counts including one count of conspiracy.  (There is always a conspiracy count in federal court, at least when there has been an extensive investigation.)   McGregor is the multimillionaire owner of one of the largest casino complexes (including a greyhound racetrack) in the country name VictoryLand.   He was tried with two serving state senators, four former state senators, and four other people.

Two defendants, State Senator Quinton Ross and VictoryLand lobbyist Bob Geddie, were completely cleared by the jury’s verdict.   The jury could not reach a verdict on 33 other counts, so the government could seek a new trial for the seven remaining defendants, who include Senator Harri Anne Smith, former Senators Larry Means and Jim Preuitt, and McGregor.

All of this arose from some new gambling machines that were proposed for use in the casinos, called electronic bingo machines.  They looked like slot machines and were common for some time around the state.  However, the Governor Bob Riley declared them illegal, and several judges agreed with him, so legalizing them was proposed in the Alabama legislature. That is where the F.B.I. investigation took place.

As the casino-sponsored bill to legalize the machines was debated in the legislature, rumors floated of a federal investigation of money offered or paid for votes in favor of the new machines.   The F.B.I. made surprise visits to some of the legislators.  Indeed, when the 65-page indictment was unsealed last year, two of those originally charged pled guilty and testified at trial for the government as “cooperating witnesses.”  They and the recorded telephone conversations were the sum and substance of the government’s case.  Much discussion of money, contributions, promises, and deals were offered into evidence, but the criminal defense lawyers argued none of that constituted bribery.  The cooperating witnesses gave their opinions that bribery was implied or understood, but all of it fell short.  The jury obviously looked past all the theater of the government’s display, looked into all the mountains of evidence, and found it unpersuasive when held to the burden that is required in American courts: beyond a reasonable doubt.

The government’s case fell short of connecting McGregor to any discussion of money or votes.  And the government’s case was not helped by tape-recordings from one of its own witnesses, Senator Scott Beason.   One of the informant legislators, he referred on one of his tapes referring to customers of a gambling hall in a predominantly black counties as “aborigines.” Beason also recorded himself talking to Republican colleagues about how passage of the bill could hurt Republicans because the bill wouldn’t take effect unless approved by voters in the November election. He argued having the issue on the ballot would bring out more black voters, who traditionally favor Democratic candidates.

On a retrial, the government is sure to omit those tapes from the jury.  But jurors in that case will also know that legislators are constantly raising money, swapping favors, and trading deals on legislation on a daily basis, and the jury will still need evidence of bribery.

New Jersey’s Supreme Court has recently ordered an overhaul in the procedures judges and juries use to treat evidence from a police lineup.  Police have always resisted encroachment on their own rules for lineups.

The Court recognized decades of research that shows the traditional procedures used for lineups have problems.  The result has been that innocent people convicted and sent to prison.   The problem has been that police, often unconsciously, give subtle hints as to which person the witness should identify.  These hints never show up in any record, so they cannot be questioned.  Both the police and the crime witness even deny that such hints exist, yet they do exist, and they have influenced the identifications of suspects in court. When that identification is the sole or strongest evidence of a suspect’s guilt, the flawed identification can be the basis for the conviction of an innocent person.

Finally there are consequences for police who refuse or fail to follow proper procedures. Courts have always been reluctant before to sanction such careless or deliberate conduct by the police.  New Jersey is one of the fifty states, but there are more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies in the country that deal with suspect identification.  Many remain skeptical about the research that faults their present procedures.  Many resent the suggestion that they could be having an affect on the accuracy of the responses of witnesses in the identification.  This resentment is no less because, research shows, the influence is unintentional.

Most police identifications are conducted the same way they have been for years and years.  Most use photos rather than an array of actual persons because photos are much easier to assemble.  The standard requirement is that all the suspect photos are supposed to be of similar race, facial hair, age so as not to make one of them obviously prominent.

More than 2,000 scientific studies have shown problems with witness accounts.  Add to that at least 190 people who were convicted by eyewitness testimony and later proved to be wrongly convicted by that gold standard of science, DNA evidence.   Those who have studied the field estimate that there are about 75,000 witness identifications each year, and some studies suggest about a third are incorrect.

Larger police departments are taking the lead in adopting the new procedures which the the New Jersey court has mandated in its jurisdiction.  In Dallas, elaborate precautions are taken to keep out any taint that might cause a question later in the courtroom or on appeal.  Witnesses are sent to a special unit of the police department that is dedicated to lineups and the detectives there have no other relationship to the case or the witnesses.  The witnesses are read instructions and shown the photos by specially trained police officers.  The photos are shown one at a time, rather than all at once.  At each photo, the witness is asked to indicate how confident he or she is about their reaction to that photo.  The entire process is recorded by videotape in case any questions later arise during the judicial process about what happened in that identification.

Naturally, the police in Dallas resented new procedures at first.  They felt their integrity was being challenged.  But after thorough training that included explanations of memory functions and the psychology behind the dynamics, the procedures began to gain some believers in the police department.   Veteran detectives notices over the years that during lineups that police gave small facial cues when a witness picked a suspect the police had in mind.

Police departments rarely make any changes until wrongful convictions become an issue, and there have been many DNA exonerations of death row inmates from convictions in Dallas.

Denver Police Department is another one that has adopted some of the new procedures about six years ago.  When they really looked at the procedures they were using, they concluded their practices were suggestive.  They have found that the new procedures help, rather than hurt, their investigations.  Only 15 miles away in Aurora, Colorado, police are doing things the same old way.  Specifics may be hard to come by since there are is no written policy on lineups.  They do not follow the National Justice Institute guidelines because state law does not require them to do so.  Ordinarily, the investigating officer in the case conducts the lineup, and it is important to him to see that the witnesses are careful in their identifications.  However, no particular consistent steps are taken to prevent influencing the identification.

For years judges have disallowed evidence of studies that explained these problems in lineups, so the juries never heard any evidence that offered the least question to the emotionally powerful testimony of an eyewitness.  The juries never got a chance to see anything behind that testimony, what did or might have suggested or tainted that testimony that was now so positive and unshakable in the courtroom.

A recent study has put some values on the criminal justice system in Oklahoma.  The system is expensive and not very effective, consultants from the nonprofit Council of State Governments’ Justice System have urged in their preliminary report.

House of Representatives Speaker Kris Steele has moderated a presentation in three cities to date, Lawton, Enid and, most recently, Muskogee.  The study is based on what it says is the data, and is aimed to reduce state spending in corrections so the savings can be reinvested in new ways to decrease crime and strengthen neighborhoods.  The presentation is being made by a team of experts who are part of the Council’s Reinvestment program and claims to have helped a dozen states, including Kansas and Texas, redesign their corrections systems.

Speaker Steele remarked that Oklahoma has increased spending on corrections by 41 percent, yet violent crime has remained unchanged.  He said, “at least 36 other states have seen decreases in violent crime during this same period.”

The project director of the Reinvestment program, Marshall Clement, said his team had focused on the major areas: Oklahoma has crime rates that are unchanged or are rising, unlike the rates in the national trends; a high percentage of inmates in Oklahoma are being released without supervision; and the incarceration population in Oklahoma is increasing at a rate that is unsustainable.  The rates for murder over the last decade has declined 13 percent nationally, yet has remained unchanged in Oklahoma.  During the same period, the rates for robberies has declined 18 percent nationally while increasing at the rate of 15 percent in Oklahoma.
What has caused these results?   A tight cause and effect is hard to show in all cases of population behavior.  Clement opined that perhaps the decline was influenced by the decline in the number of police per capita, at least in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.  He noted that the police force in Norman had increased by 18 percent with adjustment for population increase while witnessing a 48 percent decrease in violent crime.  Of course, the only certainty from much of this statistic-quoting is a headache. George Berkeley reminds us that finding effect from cause can be nothing but speculation.

One of the interest the program pointed out does merit looking at.  Many inmates prefer to serve a little more of their sentences before obtaining full release from their sentence rather than getting out earlier under parole and all the supervision requirement of parole.  The federal system requires supervision under “supervised release” after every completion of every sentence.  You would expect their recidivism rates to be better, just from that.   But the federal system seems to have an inexhaustible supply of money to fund their programs.  And one of the objections made by Oklahoma inmates to accepting to the supervision of parole, so it is reported, is the cost of supervision.  That is understandable because the $100 per month charge for this and other such charges can add up for someone who is barely earning enough to pay his expenses and the court costs that are still waiting to be paid.

The federal probation officers actively and successfully assist in getting their charges jobs and charge fees according to the income that inmate is earning.  That system is designed for the inmate to succeed, unlike the state system that tends to dump a pile of rules and regulations on a few overworked parole officers who can barely keep up, much less help their parolees meet the extra challenges of re-entering society, given all the challenges they face.

Inescapable in the discussion of exploding prison populations was the issue of 85 percent rule that requires those sentenced for certain crimes to serve 85 percent of their sentence.  Oklahoma is going to need an additional 3,000 beds in the next few years, just to hold the increase in inmates that results from the 85 percent rule.

Expungements are more and more common these days.  People who have an arrest record or even a record of conviction have the hope these days to eliminate those records from public view.   Those records often haunt people for years in their job searches and can bring troubles to  people socially.  The trend toward allowing more expungements notwithstanding, in the federal system, expungements are very rare.

Even when a person has been acquitted of charges of terrorism, the F.B.I can keep them on their watch list.  Being on this list can keep people from getting to travel on a plane, certainly exclude non-citizens from entering the country, and most certainly of all subject those persons to very, very thorough scrutiny at airports, border crossings, or even a stop for a routine traffic infraction.

The judicial system is only a speed bump for the F.B.I.  If an individual is acquitted or charges are dismissed for a crime related to terrorism, the individual must still meet the reasonable suspicion standard in order to remain on, or be subsequently nominated to, the terrorist watch list,” the once-classified memorandum says.

Just revealed is the FBI’s policy on how what they term “terror suspects” are to be treated.  Normally, if agents close the investigation without charges, they should remove the subject’s name from the list— as they should also normally do in the case of an acquittal. But for exceptions, the F.B.I. maintains a special file for people whose names it is keeping in the database because it has decided they pose a national security risk even they are not the subject of any active investigation.

The F.B.I.’s Terrorist Screening Center shares the data with other federal agencies for screening aircraft passengers, people who are crossing the border and people who apply for visas. The data is also used by local police officers to check names during traffic stops.

An F.B.I. memorandum lays out procedures for police officers to follow when they encounter people who are listed. For example, officers are never to tell the suspects that they might be on the watch list, and the police must immediately call the federal government for instructions.

Some people, those with outstanding warrants, are to be arrested.  That is no surprise.  But others are to be questioned while officers check with the Department of Homeland Security to see whether it will issue a “detainer” request.  Some are to be allowed to proceed without delay.   The F.B.I. procedures encourage agents to renominate suspects for the watch list even if they were already put on it by another agency — meaning multiple agencies would have to be involved in any attempt to later remove that person.

The procedures offer no way for people who are on the watch list to be notified of that fact or given an opportunity to see and challenge the specific allegations against them.  The American Civil Liberties Union, called the watch list system a “Star Chamber” — “a secret determination, that you have no input into, that you are a terrorist. Once that determination is made, it can ripple through your entire life and you have no way to challenge it.”

The F.B.I. said the government could not reveal who was on the list, or why, because that would risk revealing intelligence sources. He also defended the idea of the watch list, saying the government would be blamed if, after a terrorist attack, it turned out the perpetrator had attracted the suspicions of one agency but it had not warned other agencies to scrutinize the person.  The federal government believes there is no such thing as “too much” secrecy when it comes to someone whom some agent somewhere at sometime for some reason tagged a “terror suspect.”

Of course the government explains it all away and says fears of the watch list are exaggerated.  He says there are many other reasons that people are subjected to extra screening at airports.  He also said more than 200,000 people have complained to the Department of Homeland Security about their belief that they were wrongly on the list, but fewer than 1 percent of them were actually on it.   So the government’s secret police lists casts a shadow of fear on Americans by a factor of 100 to 1.   The government trumpets that it is only 1 percent, but fails to see that the fear itself, if the calls amount to fear, is a problem in itself.

Everyone knows from thousands of television programs that someone has a right to silence when arrested.  On television, that right is rarely exercise since it makes better theater to include an interrogation scene.   In real life as well, the right to remain silent is rarely exercised, often because people believe they will look guilty.  But t he right to remain silent is commonly understood to exist

How to exercise the right to remain silent is not commonly understood, however.  Most people are afraid that if they declare their wish to remain silent can be used in evidence against them.  It cannot.  The very existence of a right to remain would be meaningless if its use were presented to a jury as prosecution evidence.

So, when someone is read his Miranda Rights, does he just remain silent, and that act of silence constitute the exercise of the right to remain silent?  Some people have thought so.  It could make sense for it to operate that way, but it depends on the courts say.  Now the U.S. Supreme Court has told us, and the answer is no.

Van Chester Thompkins was accused of shooting another man in in Michigan in 2000.  When he was read his Miranda rights, he refused to sign the acknowledgment form which would have given acknowledgment that he understood his rights.   He then remained silent for three hours of police interrogation.  Finally, a police officer asked a few questions of Thompkins, the last one of which which was, “Do you pray to God to forgive you for shooting that boy down?”

Thompkins answered affirmatively to that question, and that response was used as evidence against him at his trial.  He was convicted of first-degree murder.  His appeal of that conviction found favor at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati.  That court agreed Thompkins’ response should have been excluded as protected speech under the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent on the rationale that the prosecution could not prove Thompkins had knowingly and voluntarily waived his right.

After winning that round, however, Thompkins lost the final round at the U.S. Supreme Court in the decision entitled Berghuis v. Thompkins.  In a 5-4 decision, Justice Kennedy wrote that decisions from the Court issued since the Miranda decision had diminished the language of the original Miranda decision.  A more sensible rule, Justice Kennedy wrote, would be to put the burden on suspects to invoke their rights, affirmatively.   “A suspect who has received and understood the Miranda warnings, and has not invoked his Miranda rights, waives the right to remain silent by making an uncoerced statement to the police,” Justice Kennedy stated.

Justice Kennedy was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito in the opinion.  Justice Kennedy said that someone who knew their rights and acted “in a manner inconsistent with their exercise might be presumed to have waived their rights.  The point he made was that responding to police questioning is itself an implied waiver of the right to remain silent.

But Justice Sotomayer in her dissenting opinion, then picked up that point from the majority opinion and questioned it as a paradox.  “A suspect who wishes to guard his right to remain silent must, counterintuitively, speak.”

She went on in her dissent, joined by Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and Breyer, to urge that the principles in the majority’s decision “flatly contradict” earlier decisions from the Court.  She said the better practice when faced with ambiguous responses from a suspect, as in this case, would call for the police to ask follow-up questions like, “Do you want to talk to us?”

There is a push to raise the security classification of hydrocodone.  Law enforcement claims it is the second-most abused drug and wants to make it more difficult to obtain the painkiller pill because of that abuse.  Hydrocodone is now classified as a Schedule III drug, and can be refilled up to 6 times without a visit to the doctor, and a doctor can renew the prescription by fax or phone.

If raised from a Schedule II to a Schedule II drug, like oxycodone, hydrocodone would have to be kept under lock and key.  A patient has to to present a prescription bearing the doctor’s original signature on it to obtain a Schedule II drug, and a pharmacy can give a patient only one bottle at a time.

Emergency room visits related to non-medical use of hydrocodone increased nationally from 19,221 to 86,258 in the years 2000-2009.   In Florida alone, hydrocodone reportedly caused 910 deaths between 2003 and 2007.  According to DEA reports for the country, police drug labs have found pill seizures of hydrocodone second only to those of oxycodone, e.g., OxyContin and Percocet.

The increase in hydrocodone’s schedule would ordinarily be the concern of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) and the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).  The agencies would enact a change in their administrative rules to effect the change, but the agencies have been studying the issue for 12 years.   But law enforcement wants the change, so its agents have gone around the agencies to lobby Congress directly.  The signatures of 58 members of Congress appear on a bill to enact a bill in Congress without any rule changes from the agencies.  It is unclear whether Congress would actually vote for that bill.  Having 58 members onboard is a long way from 535 members or half of them, 267.

Celebrity deaths resulting from hydrocone abuse have helped the public relations campaign to make the drug harder to get.  Actors Heath Ledger, Corey Halm, and Brittany Murphy all died from overdoses of drug cocktails that included hydrocodone.  The president of the Institute for Behavior and Health, a think tank, has expressed its support for the increase in scheduling of the drug.

Hydrocodone was originally placed in Schedule III in 1970, when it was used as a cough suppressant.  It’s use has changed, and it’s now commonly used as a painkiller.  And as users find other painkillers, like oxycodone, hard to get, they are turning increasingly to hydrocodone.

Making the drug harder to get, raising the schedule to Schedule II, would cause significant inconveniences and difficulties to many patients who use hydrocodone legitimately, like having to travel to the pharmacy every time they need to pick up their prescription, perhaps miles every trip.  These patients are dealing with real pain.  Those who suffer from neurological diseases depend on hydrocodone to carry on with normal lives.

And doctors, whose prescriptions of scheduled drugs are all tracked by law enforcement by monthly reporting, are already looking over their shoulders.  Some patient say doctors are so afraid the FDA is going to come after them, the doctors are too stingy with, or outright refuse to prescribe, Schedule II drugs.