Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police - The Washington Post

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.

The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them “adopted” by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. It allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.

“With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,” Holder said in a statement.
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While police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, Equitable Sharing was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police agencies. Some states have higher standards of proof for forfeitures and some require seized proceeds to go into the general fund.

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“It’s high time we put an end to this damaging practice,” said David Harris, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. “It has been a civil-liberties debacle and a stain on American criminal justice.”

Holder’s action comes as members of both parties in Congress are working together to craft legislation to overhaul civil asset forfeiture. On Jan. 9, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) signed a letter calling on Holder to end Equitable Sharing.

Grassley praised Holder’s decision on Friday. “We’re going to have a fairer justice system because of it,” Grassley said. “The rule of law ought to protect innocent people, and civil asset forfeiture hurt a lot of people.”

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The Treasury Department is also changing its asset forfeiture program to follow the same guideline included in Holder’s order, the statement said.

Federal agencies make larger seizures of cash and property through avenues other than Equitable Sharing, typically in cases involving defendants ranging from drug cartel kingpins to Bernard L. Madoff, whose fraud case has resulted in more than $9 billion in forfeitures in recent years.

Those programs are not affected by the changes to Equitable Sharing, but Holder also said the new policy is the first step in a “comprehensive review” of civil forfeiture in general.

On a bit of a side, one comment that stood out concerning this point:

Critics of the decision say that depriving departments of the proceeds from civil asset forfeitures will hurt legitimate efforts to fight crime, drug smuggling and terrorism.

Actually, the opposite is true. Because the police want money they routinely wait until the drugs are converted into cash before performing the raid. In other words, they wait until the drugs hit the streets. (which is no better than the police selling the drugs themselves) They have also based the decision on whether or not to move forward with an investigation based heavily on how much money the suspect has. If the police are focused more on the money they can get out of an investigation than justice they aren't doing their jobs.

Now I don't know if what is stated is "true" but it does make one wonder,,,hmm.



Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police - The Washington Post

UPDATE::District attorney backs off from taking citizens' homes - Philly.com

THE CIVIL forfeiture "money machine" run by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams may be getting shamed into submission.

Quietly yesterday, Williams' office agreed to dismiss civil-forfeiture proceedings against two Philadelphia families whose homes were in jeopardy of being seized because a family member was accused of selling drugs at the properties.

"If they don't have anything against you, they're supposed to [dismiss the case]. I didn't do anything wrong," said Somerton homeowner Christos "Chris" Sourovelis, 52.

Doila Welch, 47, whose South Philadelphia rowhouse is also home to her three children, brother and sister, was pleased.

"I'm happy they came to the decision to dismiss the case," she said. Welch, who is disabled, said others who are unfairly targeted by the city should "fight for your property, fight for your civil rights. Don't just sit there and take what they are dishing out."

She and Sourovelis are among four Philadelphians who, in August, filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the D.A.'s office seeking to rein-in its property-and-money guzzling civil-forfeiture program.

That lawsuit is moving forward to help the thousands of other innocent people ensnared by a program that was designed to catch and punish drug dealers, said Darpana Sheth, of the northern Virginia-based Institute for Justice, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs.

"We won a battle but not the war. We still have to get a full ruling that the system that Philadelphia has implemented in civil forfeiture is unconstitutional," Sheth said.

(H/T: Walter Einenkel over at Daily KOS )

District attorney backs off from taking citizens' homes - Philly.com

Philadelphia Earns Millions By Seizing Cash And Homes From People Never Charged With A Crime

Law enforcement barred the family from living in their own home for over a week. The family could only return home if they banned their son from visiting and relinquished some of their constitutional rights. Adding to the cruel irony, their son has already completed rehab, ending his punishment by the city. “If this can happen to me and my family, it can happen to anybody,” Sourovelis said.

Under civil forfeiture, property owners do not have to be convicted of a crime, or even charged with one, to permanently lose their property. Instead, the government can forfeit a property if it’s found to “facilitate” a crime, no matter how tenuous the connection. So rather than sue the owner, in civil forfeiture proceedings, the government sues the property itself, leading to surreal case names like Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. The Real Property and Improvements Known as 2544 N. Colorado St.

In other words, thanks to civil forfeiture, the government punishes innocent people for the crimes other people might have committed. Sadly, the Sourovelis family is not alone. Doila Welch faces civil forfeiture of her home, which has been in her family for 17 years, because her estranged husband, unbeknownst to her, was dealing small amounts of marijuana. Norys Hernandez and her sister co-own a rowhouse, but her sister is still barred from living there because Hernandez’s nephew was arrested for selling drugs outside her rowhouse. Welch and Hernandez have not been charged with any crime and both have joined Sourovelis as named plaintiffs in IJ’s class action against the Philadelphia forfeiture machine.

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Meanwhile, the owners who want to defend themselves and retrieve their seized property must venture to the Orwellian-sounding Courtroom 478. Despite its name, there are neither judges nor juries in Courtroom 478. Instead, there are only assistant district attorneys and a scheduler, who deal with up to 80 forfeiture cases in a single day.

With the prosecutors running this kangaroo court, the DA’s Office clearly wields enormous power. Poring over 8,000 asset forfeiture cases filed against cash in 2010, the Philadelphia City Paper found that 83 percent were decided on the very first court listing. Of those, a staggering 96 percent of the decisions favored the DA.

Philadelphia Earns Millions By Seizing Cash And Homes From People Never Charged With A Crime

1/7/2015::Updated Tags