Your Tax Dollars Hard at Work

Roni and Charity Bowers


On April 20, 2001, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency ordered the Peruvian Air Force to shoot down a plane suspected of smuggling drugs out of Peru. The plane was carrying not drugs but American religious missionaries Jim and Roni Bowers; Roni and seven-month-old daughter Charity died in the shooting.

Esequiel Hernandez

On May 20, 1997, 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez was shot in the back by U.S. Marines patrolling the Texas-Mexico border for drug smugglers. Hernandez, who was tending his family's herd of goats, bled to death. He was the first U.S. civilian to be killed by U.S. armed forces since the 1970 political protests at Kent State University.


Weldon Angelos

Twenty-five-year-old Weldon Angelos was sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling several hundred dollars' worth of marijuana to a police informant on three separate occasions ? his first offenses. Because he had a gun during the commission of his crimes, though did not use or brandish it, he received a sentence that even his judge called "unjust, cruel, and even irrational."