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This is a very bad law.

I've never been subject to this law, but am adamantly opposed to such an odious legislated infraction of our Constitutional rights against unlawful search and seizure. The entire edifice of civil asset forfeiture rests upon the legal fiction of in rem jurisdiction, where the property being seized is treated as the guilty party. The longer this offensive practice stays on the books, the more I'm encouraged to diversify my assets out of the United States purely as a defensive measure.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that prevents this practice from devolving in the future into prosecutors shaking down citizens with small businesses, and taking part in turning our nation into a fourth-rate penny-ante patchwork of strongmen fiefdoms given a tissue-paper legitimacy by these sham laws. And before any naysayers out there say this is just paranoid fantasy, what prevents private sector attornies from going on fishing expeditions for tort cases? That right, nothing except the evaluated odds of winning. So what in hell makes you think prosecutors are going to be any different when they figure out that they are unlikely to be slapped on the wrist for wrongful prosecution because the expense of mounting a legal counterattack is so punishingly damaging to most businesses?

CAFRA requires proof by a preponderance of evidence that the property should be forfeited. There is a common mistaken belief that the burden of proof upon the government is satisfied by mere suspicion. This used to be true, but no longer since the passage of CAFRA in 2000. It would be even better if the required test of evidence was clear and convincing evidence, given the rapacious pecuniary interest of the government bureaucrats involved.

Based upon the sketchy details given here however, I'm unmoved by the officer's "hunch" as sufficient evidence to satisfy the "preponderance of evidence" test, especially because the truck driver was released without being charged. The definition of "preponderance of evidence": a standard of judging evidence by which the judge or the jury determines whether an issue of fact is more probable than not probable.

If this is really drug money, at the very least the truck driver is a courier, if not an actual dealer. The driver was not arrested for inebriation, illegal drug possession, or even disorderly conduct. If there are any police officers here, I would really like to hear what kind of evidence on earth could let you conclude that yes, this is drug money and yes, you can let the courier go without being charged at the same time. How can you possibly be helping a drug operation, be caught red-handed, and walk away?

The prosecutors, chiefs of police, and law enforcement officers who take part in any seizures knowing they haven't a solid leg to stand on but do so anyways because the spin of the seizure roulette wheel says that they get to keep the property more often than not because the owners simply can't justify mounting a legal defense that exceeds the value of the property should be tried for violating the Constitution. Thank God this is not yet a widespread trend, but it is only a matter of time.