Why the Eastern District of Texas?

Several thousand individuals from central and south America have been extradited to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas since 2009, for prosecution. You ask why, this is why.

The Plano/Sherman Division is made of a very conservative 89% white potential jury pool in which the population generally has unfavorable views of countries south of Laredo, Texas. This partnered with a history of some of the toughest sentencing judges in the United States led to prosecutions being handled in the Eastern District of Texas versus the more liberal Miami, New York and District of Colombia courts. In recent years, the United States Sentencing Commission has released statistics which show convictions for drug distribution or conspiracy to distribute drugs results in sentences which are 100% higher than the national average in the Eastern District of Texas (120 months vs 60 months).

The second factor is a provision in United States law that allows that foreign citizens who are indicted in the United States can be tried in the first district in which they land after extradition. For that reason, there is a special provision with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that allows their plane to fly straight into McKinney, Texas, from Bogota and other airports in central and south America.

Don Bailey has practiced extensively in, mainly, the Eastern District of Texas for more than thirty years. Don’t think that an attorney from Miami or New York will know the landscape better but be an educated consumer when it comes to hiring a lawyer.