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Shoot, where I live police and prosecutors don't even need approval from a judge for expenditures from their asset forfeiture funds. They get audited every once in a while, but the only requirement is that they only use the money for "law enforcement or prosecutorial purposes." So far they've never gotten in trouble for how they spend the money. All the attorneys in the prosecutor's office and several of their staff drive fancy "company cars" that were either seized or paid for with asset forfeiture funds, as are a lot of the cars driven by members of local law enforcement. Their fancy cell phone/pda's that they use for personal use as well as work, just like the cars, are all paid for with asset forfeiture funds. Their offices are lavishly furnished. They've got the awesome computer system and nothing but the best software, with each attorney having a desktop for their office and a laptop for downtown. They've paid to wire the whole downtown it seems so their wireless network works anywhere they might need it. They and everyone in local law enforcement have memberships to the gym paid for out of asset forfeiture funds, and for some strange reason the prosecutors all have televisions with cable in their offices. They have extra staff members whose salaries are paid out of those funds. When they go on continuing legal education trips they're always all expense paid trips to exotic places. They have money for whatever they need or want it seems as long as they can somehow loosely tie it to "law enforcement or prosecutorial purposes." All this money really gives them a strong advantage over all but the most wealthy defendants. They have money to hire any expert witnesses they want to hire. They can have all sorts of video and graphic demonstrative evidence professionally done. They can decide to just fly witnesses in from anywhere in the country the day before court and put them up in hotels. They're just flush with cash that pays for a lot of perks and supplements their war chest such that you've just got to have a lot of money if you want to be on equal footing with them at trial.

Most cases never make it to trial though. The national average for is only about 2.5% of all felony cases ever make it to jury trial. Almost all of them are resolved by plea. If you have enough money you can afford a decent defense. But if you're a criminal caught red handed and likely to get convicted no matter how much money you spend, and you happen to have lots of money, why not buy a sweet deal if you can rather than blowing a lot of money on a trial where you'll lose anyway and get hammered hard? This stuff happens everywhere. I see it going on all the time, and I'm always in court. I'm a public defender so most of my clients can't come up with a big chunk of money to get a better deal, but I always tell them up front to save up as much money as possible because it will help in plea negotiations in the future. What bothers me the most about all of this is that often the really bad guys get off easy this way, especially in drug cases. The big fish swim away while the small fish get filleted. That's just the way of the world I guess.

I live near a small town where they built a brand new public safety building for both the cops and fire department from asset forfeitures. It was by far the biggest and most expensive building in town and was better equipped than the larger cities in the area. Very few of the cases had any involvement any where near Black Diamond, Washington where one hotshot detective traveled all over the country acquiring all the booty possible through asset forfeiture laws. His primary objective in pursuing cases was how much money could be seized. He set records for the amount seized by a single police department, topping even the amount seized by big cities. Getting a conviction was of far less importance than how much money could be acquired for his city and police department. There is nothing about such a system that resembles justice.