• Tag Archives civil forfeiture

  • Arizona Takes Asset Forfeiture to a Despicable New Low

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    In The Law, Frederic Bastiat warned against what he termed “legal plunder” — the government forcibly taking one person’s property and giving it to another. It’s morally wrong and leads to the progressive destruction of civil society as more and more people and groups seek to live at the expense of others through the state.

    One of the most odious modern examples is called civil asset forfeiture.

    Under federal and state civil asset forfeiture laws, individuals can have their property (cash, vehicles, real estate, or anything else) confiscated by law enforcement officials merely on the allegation that the property was somehow involved with or obtained from criminal activity. The individual need not even be accused of any illegal conduct, much less convicted, in order for officials to seize the “guilty” property.

    Once the property has been seized, it is up to the owner to battle through difficult legal obstacles to recover it. In such proceedings, the burden of proof is on the individual to show that the seizure was wrongful and that he’s entitled to have the property returned. Police and prosecutors love civil asset forfeiture because the proceeds actually go into their own budgets, and they are not inclined to cooperate with innocent victims of their confiscations.

    To see how despicable this is, consider a recent case that arose in Pinal County, Arizona.

    In April 2013, Rhonda Cox purchased a used pickup truck, which she titled and insured in her name. She often allowed her son Chris to use her truck, and one day in August 2013, he drove it to a store. Upon returning to the vehicle, Chris was confronted by Pinal County sheriff’s deputies who were investigating the theft of a tonneau cover (which goes over the back of a pickup truck) and a truck hood.

    The deputies concluded that the cover and the hood on Cox’s truck were the stolen items and therefore put Chris under arrest. And, of course, they confiscated the truck under Arizona’s civil asset forfeiture statute.

    Chris called his mother, and she rushed to the scene, where she found one deputy remaining, guarding her truck. She explained that the vehicle belonged to her and asked how she could get it back. The deputy smugly replied that she would never get it back. When Rhonda protested that she had nothing to do with the alleged crime, the deputy merely said, “Too bad.”

    The sheriff’s department initiated seizure proceedings against the truck. Rhonda was unable to afford an attorney and attempted to fight it on her own. That was when she learned about Arizona’s intimidating law about attorneys’ fees in asset forfeiture cases.

    In an email, deputy Craig Cameron told her that she was merely a “straw owner,” who had no standing to contest the seizure, that she had a duty to ensure that the vehicle was not used in any crime and, crucially, that “Under A.R.S. 13-4314(G) the State is due attorney fees from a party who does not prove they are entitled to an exception to forfeiture.”

    Not only could she lose her truck, she also would face thousands of dollars in fees if she tried and failed to recover it. You can easily imagine how that information affected a woman who can’t even afford her own lawyer.

    Source: Arizona Takes Asset Forfeiture to a Despicable New Low | Foundation for Economic Education


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  • Police seized his life savings without charging him for a crime. Now he’s fighting back.

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Charles Clarke entered the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport last February eager to go back to his mother after a months-long visit with relatives. But instead of a quick, easy trip home to Orlando, Clarke lost his life savings — $11,000 in cash — to law enforcement officials who never even proved he committed a crime.

    Clarke, a 24-year-old college student, said losing that $11,000 was “devastating.” He’s been forced to live with his mom, trumping his plans to move closer to school. He’s fallen back on other family for financial support. And he had to take out loans for school instead of paying for it up front — for which he’s still in debt. “It’s been a struggle for me,” Clarke, who’s now fighting in court to get his money back, said.

    But law enforcement officials may have been working within the confines of the law when they took Clarke’s money. Under federal and state laws that allow what’s called “civil forfeiture,” law enforcement officers can seize someone’s property without proving the person was guilty of a crime; they just need probable cause to believe the assets are being used as part of criminal activity, typically drug trafficking. Police can then absorb the value of this property — be it cash, cars, guns, or something else — as profit: either through state programs, or under a federal program known as Equitable Sharing that lets local and state police get up to 80 percent of the value of what they seize as money for their departments.

    So police can not only seize people’s property without proving involvement in a crime, but they have a financial incentive to do so.

    It’s these laws that law enforcement officials cited in taking Clarke’s cash, and in seizing thousands of other people’s property across the country. But Clarke’s story shows just how flimsy the initial basis for taking someone’s money can be — starting with, simply, how his checked luggage smelled.

    Source: Police seized his life savings without charging him for a crime. Now he’s fighting back. – Vox


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  • How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without ever charging him with a crime

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Joseph Rivers was hoping to hit it big. According to the Albuquerque Journal, the aspiring businessman from just outside of Detroit had pulled together $16,000 in seed money to fulfill a lifetime dream of starting a music video company. Last month, Rivers took the first step in that voyage, saying goodbye to the family and friends who had supported him at home and boarding an Amtrak train headed for Los Angeles.

    He never made it. From the Albuquerque Journal:

    A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why. When Rivers replied that he was headed to LA to make a music video, the agent asked to search his bags. Rivers complied.

    The agent found Rivers’s cash, still in a bank envelope. He explained why he had it: He was starting a business in California, and he’d had trouble in the past withdrawing large sums of money from out-of-state banks.

    The agents didn’t believe him, according to the article. They said they thought the money was involved in some sort of drug activity. Rivers let them call his mother back home to corroborate the story. They didn’t believe her, either.

    The agents found nothing in Rivers’s belongings that indicated that he was involved with the drug trade: no drugs, no guns. They didn’t arrest him or charge him with a crime. But they took his cash anyway, every last cent, under the authority of the Justice Department’s civil asset forfeiture program.

    Rivers’s life savings represent just a drop in the Justice Department’s multibillion-dollar civil asset forfeiture bucket. Rivers has retained a lawyer in the hope of getting at least some of his money back. Rivers says he suspects he may have been singled out for a search because he was the only black person on that part of the train.

    There is no presumption of innocence under civil asset forfeiture laws. Rather, law enforcement officers only need to have a suspicion — in practice, often a vague one — that a person is involved with illegal activity in order to seize their property. On the highway, for instance, police may cite things like tinted windows, air fresheners or trash in the car, according to a Washington Post investigation last year.

    The DEA declined to comment in detail to the Albuquerque Journal’s Joline Guierrez Krueger, though it did say that Rivers was not targeted because of his race. The Albuquerque DEA office did not immediately respond to a request by The Washington Post for more information about the case.

    Once property has been seized, the burden of proof falls on the defendant to get it back — even if the cops ultimately never charge them with a crime. “We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty,” an Albuquerque DEA agent told the Journal. “It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty.”

    The practice has proven to be controversial. Earlier this year, then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced measures restricting the use of some types of civil asset forfeiture. But as the Institute for Justice noted in a February report, these changes only affect a small percentage of forfeitures initiated by local law enforcement agencies, not federal ones like the DEA. About 90 percent of Justice Department seizures won’t be affected at all.

    Asset forfeiture is lucrative for the DEA. According to their latest notification of seized goods, updated Monday, agents have seized well over $38 million dollars’ worth of cash and goods from people in the first few months of this year. Some of the goods may be directly related to ongoing criminal investigations, but most of them are not.

    For instance, in fiscal year 2014 Justice Department agencies made a total of $3.9 billion in civil asset seizures, versus only $679 million in criminal asset seizures. In most years since 2008, civil asset forfeitures have accounted for the lion’s share of total seizures.

    Source: How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without ever charging him with a crime


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