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The New Orleans case was apparently part of the DEA's new campaign. By going after promoters, the agency wouldn't have to waste its time on low-level dealers. And evidence that managers were running something akin to a crack house seemed to be everywhere. There were all those pacifiers and glow sticks. The bottled water on sale was also suspect, since drugs that rev the system often cause dehydration. In an affidavit, Templeton even cited dancers' moves as evidence of drug use. It's common, he wrote, "for persons involved in rave management to allow patrons to touch and massage one another to enhance the heightened sensory perception to palpation created by the use of [ecstasy]." O.K., but it's also common for people who are dancing to get funky, whether they are high or not.
To be sure, the DEA is on to something. Plenty of drug users showed up for the raves. Templeton says in his affidavit that when he went undercover to talk to Brian Brunet about working at the club, Brunet told him he didn't expect security guards to look actively for drug activity. If they found it, Brunet allegedly said, the guards usually didn't contact authorities. When Templeton commented to Brunet that getting dealers arrested would kill the party, Brunet allegedly responded, "Exactly." Templeton says that during his rave nights, numerous dealers were offering him drugs, messed-up kids were constantly vomiting, people were smoking pot openly--but "neither the security guards [nor] the management...did anything to curtail the illegal activity going on around them."
If all that is true, did the defendants break the Crack House Statute? Maybe. The law has never been stretched so far. Perhaps a jury could be convinced, but the prosecutors had hoped the case wouldn't get to that stage. They offered plea deals of a year in prison (the law carries a maximum of 20 years). But the A.C.L.U. helped persuade the defendants to fight. "Go after the people who deal the drugs," says Graham Boyd, head of the A.C.L.U. Drug Policy Litigation Project. "But you can't go after the people who provide the music--and you especially can't go after only the ones who provide a certain kind." The DEA didn't investigate other State Palace events.
In addition to the A.C.L.U., a local lawyer is helping. Buddy Lemann is the kind of charming defense attorney who wears three-piece suits, drinks martinis at lunch, writes a book about himself called Hail to the Dragon Slayer--and the kind who wins constantly and charges a lot. But the Brunets and Estopinal hope the music industry will help pay. An organization called the Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund has formed in Los Angeles to raise money for them; the fund may also look into efforts by authorities to shut down raves in Chicago and other cities using local ordinances similar to the Crack House Statute. The International Association of Assembly Managers, a trade group for 1,500 entertainment venues, has filed a brief in support of the defendants. "No amount of training, security, or preparation can...constrain any and all illegal behavior at any mass gathering," it says.