Loren Pogue

by Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Chair

June, 2002

Many people may have been surprised to learn while reading about the Dallas Police Department fake drugs scandal that the informant was one of the highest paid persons on the Department’s payroll. Use of highly paid informants is commonplace in drug cases and it’s not limited to Dallas.

Take the case of Loren Pogue who is serving 22 years for conspiracy to import drugs and money laundering. Mr. Pogue owned a real estate firm in San Vito, Costa Rica. He was an active member of the community, belonging to Lions Club, Masons, Shriners, American Legion and VFW. He was past director of a children’s home and had 15 adopted children. One day a part time employee asked him to sit in on the closing of a piece of undeveloped mountainous property. The purchasers commented that they intended to build an airstrip on the property and smuggle drugs. The part time employee was a confidential informant who was paid $250,000. The purchasers were DEA undercover agents. Mr. Pogue did not stop the sale so he was sentenced to 22 years. He is currently held at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth.

He says "There were no drugs involved. The government agents said they were going to fly 1000 kilos of drugs into the U.S., and that's what I was sentenced on."

Mr. Pogue’s case illustrates three important elements of the drug war. The FBI defines crime as every offense against persons or property that you might think of except nonviolent drug offenses. It says it doesn’t include drug offenses because few people report them. For this same reason, almost all drug cases are made using paid informants and deception.

Because of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, the courts could not consider that Mr. Pogue had no drug history, that he was 63 years old, that he supported 15 children, that he had been a missionary and served in the military or that he saw the undercover agents only once. Congress has taken all such considerations away from the courts.

More than 60% of federal prisoners and 20% of state prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders. It costs taxpayers $25,000 to $50,000 per year to keep each of them in prison. What we get for our money at the end of the sentence is a person who is more likely to be violent than when s/he entered prison. In addition their children become more likely to commit crimes. The most accurate indicator of who will end up in prison is who has a parent who did time in prison. Today more than 2.5M American children have a parent in prison.