Critics see abuse in applying Patriot Act to common crimes

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- In the two years since the nation began giving law enforcement agencies fresh powers to help them track down and punish terrorists, police and prosecutors have increasingly turned the force of the new laws not on Al-Qaida cells, but on people charged with common crimes.
The Justice Department said it has used authority given to it by the USA Patriot Act to crack down on currency smugglers and seize money hidden overseas by alleged bookies, con artists and drug dealers.
Federal prosecutors used the act in June to file a charge of "terrorism using a weapon of mass destruction" against a California man after a pipe bomb exploded in his lap, wounding him as he sat in his car.
A county prosecutor in North Carolina charged a man accused of running a methamphetamine lab with violating a state law barring the manufacture of chemical weapons.
If convicted, Martin Dwayne Miller could get from 12 years to life in prison for a crime that usually puts a person behind bars for about six months.
Watauga County District Attorney Jerry Wilson said he isn't abusing the law, which passed two months after the Sept. 11 attacks and defines chemical weapons of mass destruction as "any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury and ... is or contains toxic or poisonous chemicals or their immediate precursors."
Civil liberties and legal defense groups, though, have been bothered by the string of cases, and say the government will soon routinely be using harsh anti-terrorism laws against run-of-the-mill lawbreakers.
"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys.