Re:His mistake (Score 1)

Yes and no... his mistake was also in in not believing the old adage that says "if something seems too good to be true, it probably is ". If you are custom building a smuggler's hole and a lot of people are paying you a lot of money for your work.... you should assume that the people paying you are smugglers and are on the wrong side of the law. It doesn't make sense that you have this many well heeled customers who only want to transport the book of mormon through Mississippi. (apologies to both the LDS people and Mississippi). On the other hand... the thing that makes this service he performed so valuable was the fact that it made the illegal livelihood of his customers possible. This is a typical "but for" situation. But for his well compensated efforts, the bad guys would have been easier to catch.

Consider the hypothetical with the same fact pattern... If his customers had been caught with nerve gas and were found to be terrorists.... would there be this many people defending him? What if he had used his skills and built some undetectable traps into some corporate jets and the bad guys used them to smuggle underage girls in for the sex trade?

Confusing this whole argument with the legitimate argument about if we should or should not outlaw some forms of recreational drug use is illogical. At the moment, they are against the law and we as citizens must respect the law. That said, we are free to do whatever in the world we want as long as we are prepared to live with the consequences. He took a chance, he made some bad decisions. Those both can have consequences.