I’m not thinking about one particular case. My concern is these seizures of property that go on for months or years even when there has been no conviction. If the state cannot convict you of a crime in that amount of time, then they should return the property, as they have had plenty of time for forensic examination and documentation of the property. Remember, the suspect is still presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
That is true. It has been a practice in some federal drug cases where the govt offers a deal to the defendant in which the property is surrendered to the govt and either returned upon an acquittal or, if the property is sold subsequent to acquittal with the accused’s permission, proceeds of the sale are paid to the accused accused. The company I used to work for had a contract with the local U.S. Marshall office to sell it’s confiscated assets and the pickup said assets pending trial outcome. Almost all the assets were cars and trucks and we had an old midrise garage to store them in. Sometimes it would take four or five years to get clearance to sell one. In 1990, we held an absolute auction sale of 50 vehicles seized in one raid in the D.C. suburbs. There were 800 registered bidders for the 50 cars. It was held in February in bone-chilling cold and I stood with a couple of D.C. DEA agents against a building overlooking the auction line. One of the agents had a set of real long binoculars and was checking out the bidders. He told me it was common for the drug dealers’ buddies and competitors to come to these sales to buy selected cars. Frequently some of them would have federal warrants so it was sort of like a worthwhile honey trap. Prices paid for some of these were outrageous. A BMW 7 series with over 300,000 on the clock with lots of lower panel rust and totally faded interior with cracked dash and leather seats sold for $10,000. It was worth maybe two grand at the time. A Range Rover that was beat inside and out with about twenty nine millimeter bullet holes in the driver side door and posts sold for $15,000 when it wouldn’t even start.