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Deputy D.A. will take on traffickers Mail Tribune / Jim Craven Jackson County Deputy District Attorney Judi Harper has been assigned to the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. The goal of HIDTA prosecutions is to identify higher-ups in drug organizations and prosecute them in federal court. Harper assigned to help extend federal program By Chris Bristol For years, Jackson County Deputy District Attorney Judi Harper has been the scourge of rapists and child molesters. Now she plans to take on drug traffickers. As a special prosecutor who can try cases in both federal and state court, Harper was recently assigned to help coordinate a somewhat obscure federal program known as HIDTA, or High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area. If you�ve never heard of it, you�re not alone. HIDTA is really more of a designation than a program. In federal lingo, Jackson County is a HIDTA. So are Marion and Deschutes counties. But the designation means next to nothing without a prosecutor. The goal is to prosecute more drug traffickers at the federal level, where penalties are usually much steeper than penalties in state court. "A lot of times, we weren�t able to move cases ... that we thought should move up into the federal system," says Lt. Jim Anderson, who heads the Jackson County Narcotic Enforcement Team. "It�s been very frustrating." Locally, methamphetamine remains the biggest problem. The toxic, paranoia-inducing stimulant accounts for 60 percent of all drug crimes in the region; more than 1,400 felony charges were filed in 1999, up from a total of 81 in 1991. Those kinds of numbers earned the county the HIDTA designation, which brought with it roughly $200,000 in federal grants. Most of the proceeds pay for salaries, including the prosecutor, a legal assistant and a secretary. As the HIDTA prosecutor, Harper will work closely with JACNET and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which share an office building in Medford. Her new office will be in the same building. Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Thomson said an extra prosecutor should come in handy. He and Doug Fong are the only two federal prosecutors in Medford, and they have a huge caseload that includes felony deportations. "She�s very sharp," Thomson says of Harper, "and yes, we can use the help." A native of Portland and graduate of Oregon State University, Harper was hired as a Jackson County deputy district attorney right after she got her law degree from Lewis and Clark�s Northwestern School of Law in 1990. Since 1994 she has prosecuted sex crimes, a category that includes child abuse. Winning case after case, many of them high profile trials such as the Tre Chase/Terry Carruthers smothering case, Harper built a reputation as a formidable courtroom adversary. She says she enjoyed prosecuting sex offenders and applied for the HIDTA job only because she relished the prospect of doing something new. "I wasn�t burned out," she says. "I just wanted a fresh challenge. Learning a new system, especially the federal system, now that�s a challenge." The goal of HIDTA is to identify higher-ups in drug trafficking organizations and prosecute them in federal court. Harper�s job is to work with agents from the beginning, helping coordinate investigations and making sure search-and-seizure laws are not broken. Harper said she added drug cases to her workload in Jackson County over the past year to familiarize herself with the crimes. In doing so, she discovered the advantage of prosecuting drug traffickers in federal court. "A woman I filed on this morning who already had three pending cases against her, all major delivery cases," Harper says. "She was out committing No. 4 because there�s no jail space. "Hopefully this job is going to mean that the bigger guys, folks like her, are going to be doing more prison time." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.