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A case before the U.S. Supreme Court today boiled down to whether a sock can be considered drug paraphernalia. It's a case that tests whether the government can deport legal permanent residents for minor drug crimes. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: Each year the government deports 30 to 35,000 non-citizens for drug crimes. The question is what crimes justify deportation, especially for those who, like Moones Mellouli, are legal permanent residents in the U.S.? Mellouli came to the U.S. on a student visa from Tunisia. He graduated with honors, then went on to earn two master's degrees in applied mathematics and economics from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He became a lawful permanent resident, worked as an actuary and taught mathematics at the university.
But in 2010, he was arrested for driving under the influence and having four Adderall pills in his sock. Adderall is a drug prescribed to treat hyperactivity, but it's widely used by students and others to stay awake. Mellouli pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for possession of drug paraphernalia - namely the sock used to contain the four pills. He got a suspended sentence plus a year's probation, and he was subsequently deported. He appealed his deportation all the way to the Supreme Court. Jon Laramore is his lawyer.
JON LARAMORE: This is part of a series of cases in which the Supreme Court has looked at deportations for minor drug convictions, and in each of the cases that's come before this - three of them - the court has ruled against the government.
TOTENBERG: Inside the Supreme Court chamber today it looked very much as though the government's losing streak would continue and Mellouli would get the chance to return to the U.S. The argument focused on the intersection between federal and state law as it applies to deportations. Federal law allows the government to deport a non-citizen convicted in state court for a crime relating to any drug controlled under the federal criminal code. But state laws often make many more drugs illegal, and Kansas law treats any container used to store a drug as drug paraphernalia.
And so when the government's lawyer, Assistant Solicitor General Rachel Kovner, got up to argue today, the justices who asked questions were unabashedly, and without exception, incredulous. Justice Ginsburg - because of the sock the crime justifies deportation. Justice Scalia - do you think a sock is more than tenuously related to these federal drugs? Justice Breyer - if we look back at the charging documents they don't say anything about drugs. Justice Kagan - paraphernalia offenses are generally extremely minor offenses. They're not felonies. They're misdemeanors that prosecutors use when they don't want to charge a more serious offense.
Kovner, the government's lawyer, replied that just because prosecutors let someone plead to a lesser offense doesn't mean that immigration authorities lack the authority to deport that individual when the crime is related to a federally controlled substance.
Chief Justice Roberts - I would have thought the opposite inference. If it's not such a big deal that the state is willing to let him cop a plea to drug paraphernalia, then why should that be the basis for deportation under federal law?
Lawyer Kovner - suppose he'd had cocaine in his sock; under his theory he would not have been deportable for having drug paraphernalia. Justice Kagan - if he'd had cocaine in his sock he would probably be convicted of possession of cocaine. But in this case, observed Kagan - the former dean of the Harvard Law school - he had four pills of Adderall, which if you go to half the colleges in America and just randomly pick somebody, you'd find Adderall. That brought the house down, and probably the government's case too. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.