Posted on 12/21/2007 12:14:30 AM PST by LibWhacker
LIMA — Two robbers who broke into Luther Ricks Sr.’s house this summer may have not gotten his life savings he had in a safe, but after the FBI confiscated it he may not get it back.
Ricks has tried to get an attorney to fight for the $402,767 but he has no money. Lima Police Department officers originally took the money from his house but the FBI stepped in and took it from the Police Department. Ricks has not been charged with a crime and was cleared in a fatal shooting of one of the robbers but still the FBI has refused to return the money, he said.
“They are saying I have to prove I made it,” he said.
The 63-year-old Ricks said he and his wife, Meredith, saved the money during their lifetime in which both worked while living a modest life.
A representative of the FBI could not be reached for comment.
During the fatal shooting incident inside the house June 30, Ricks and his son were being attacked by two men and his son was stabbed. Ricks broke free, grabbed a gun and shot to death 32-year-old Jyhno Rock inside his home at 939 Greenlawn Ave.
Police originally took the money after finding marijuana inside Ricks’ home, which Ricks said he had to help manage pain.
“I smoke marijuana. I have arthritis. I have shingles, a hip replacement,” he said.
Ricks, who is retired from Ohio Steel Foundry, said he always had a safe at home and never had a bank account.
American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Legal Director Jeff Gamso said Ricks has a tough road ahead, not impossible, but tough to get back his money.
“The law of forfeiture basically says you have to prove you’re innocent. It’s terrible, terrible law,” he said.
The law is tilted in favor of the FBI in that Ricks need not be charged with a crime and the FBI stands a good chance at keeping the money, Gamso said.
“The law will presume it is the result of ill-gotten gains,” he said.
Still Ricks can pursue it and possibly convince a judge he had the money through a lifetime of savings. Asking the FBI usually doesn’t work, he said.
“The FBI, before they would give it up, would want dated receipts,” he said.
If the FBI does keep the money, it would be put toward a law enforcement use, if the city of Lima does not fight for it because the city discovered it, Gamso said.
Lima Law Director Tony Geiger said he has not been asked to stake a legal claim for the money.
Our government is dangerous and out of control.
To take money from someone and make them PROVE they got it lawfully is just dammed WRONG. If this man doesn’t get his money back, he has every right to do what he wishes in return to the feds, and I mean anything....
He deserves to have the government take all his money because he committed a “crime” that carries the punishment of a fine? Why can’t he just pay the hundred bucks that possessing an ounce or less calls for in Ohio?
So if you have drugs in your home, the feds are entitled to all of your assets?
So is abortion on demand. Would you defend it on that basis?
and make life tougher for criminals.
Drug cartels continue to make $100's of billions each year, as they have for many years, so it can't be too tough. Drugs are purer and cheaper than ever, and available to anyone who wants them. That is called a massive failure.
Again thanks for your informative descriptions of how the forfeiture system works. A handy resource for FR!
I found the case i mentioned, and the most complete description seems to be this:
THE PITTSBURGH PRESS
Copyright 1991 The Pittsburgh Press Co.
Reprinted with permission.
THURSDAY AUGUST 15, 1991 Page A6
JET SEIZED, TRASHED, OFFERED BACK FOR $66,000
By Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty
The Pittsburgh Press With more than 9,000 flights under his belt, Billy Munnerlyn has survived
lots of choppy air. But it took only one flight into a government forfeiture
action to send his small air charter service crashing to the ground.
Munnerlyn and his wife, Karon, both 53, worked for years building their
Las Vegas business. Their four planes - a jet and three props - flew
businessmen, air freight, air ambulance runs and Grand Canyon tours.
“It wasn’t a big operation, but it was ours,” Mrs. Munnerlyn says.
Today, Munnerlyn is malting 22 cents a mile trucking watermelons and
frozen car-rots across the country in an 18-wheeler.
He has filed for bankruptcy. He sold off his three smaller planes and
office equipment to pay $80,000 in legal fees. His 1969 Lear Jet - his pride
and joy - is being held by the federal government at a storage hangar in Texas.
Munnerlyn’s life went into a tailspin the afternoon of Oct. 2, 1989,
when he flew an old man and four padlocked, blue plastic boxes to the Ontario
International Airport, outside Los Angeles.
His passenger was 74-year-old Albert Wright, a convicted cocaine
trafficker. The plastic boxes contained $2,795,685 in cash.
But Munnerlyn says he didn’t know that until three hours after they
landed and Drug Enforcement Administration agents handcuffed him and took him
to the Cucamonga County Jail. Munnerlyn was charged with drug trafficking
and ordered to pay $1 million bail. Seventy-one hours later, he was released
without being charged.
When he went to get his plane, a drug agent told him “it belongs to the
government now” - a simple statement that launched a devastating legal battle
that continues today. An informant had told Ontario Airport police that
Wright would arrive Oct. 2 with a large amount of currency to purchase
narcotics.
Police were waiting when the Lear landed. They watched Wright get off the
plane. For the next three hours, agents followed him as he met two other
people, picked up a rented van, returned to the airport and unloaded the
plastic containers from Munnerlyn’s jet.
Police followed the van to a residence about 20 miles away. They
surrounded the van and four people nearby. All were identified as being major
cocaine traffickers.
A search of the plastic boxes found $2,795,685.
At the airport, agents told Munnerlyn he was in trouble. They searched
the jet. No drugs were found, but they seized $8,500 in cash that he had been
paid for the charter.
“I guessed they would figure out I had nothing to do with that guy and his
drug money, and give me my plane and $8,500 back,” Munnerlyn says. He was
wrong.
Two weeks later, drug agents showed up at Munnerlyn’s Las Vegas home and
office and carried off seven boxes of documents and flight logs.
It was just the beginning of the government’s efforts to prove he was a
drug trafficker and had flown for Wright for years. Munnerlyn says he didn’t
even know Wright was the man’s name.
Several days before the seizure, Munnerlyn was contacted by a man
identifying himself as “Randy Sullivan,” a banker, who was willing to discuss
financing a new aircraft that Munnerlyn had been telling business contacts he
wanted to buy.
Munnerlyn agreed to meet him Oct. 2 at Little Rock Airport. “We were
going to fly back to Las Vegas, where I was going to show him my operation and
talk about him financing my purchase of a larger plane.” Munnerlyn picked up
“Sullivan” and four boxes of “financial records.”
“He was a distinguished-looking, very old man dressed in a dark suit. He
looked like a banker is supposed to look,” Munnerlyn says.
They stopped in Oklahoma City to refuel. When they took off 45 minutes
later headed to Las Vegas, “Sullivan” told Munnerlyn he had made a telephone
call and had to go to the Ontario airport instead. They would discuss the loan
at a later date, he told the pilot.
While en route, he paid Munnerlyn $8,300, the normal tariff for a jet
charter, and gave him a $200 tip.
“I told the DEA that I never saw that man before in my life, and I’ve
never had anything to do with drugs,” Munnerlyn says. “All I want is my plane
back.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas is still fighting to prevent
that from happening.
In court documents Mayorkas filed, he acknowledged the government “will
rely in part on circumstantial evidence and otherwise inadmissible hearsay” to
try to justify the forfeiture.
The government “need not establish a substantial connection to illegal
activity, but need only establish probable cause,” the prosecutor wrote.
Mayorkas says the fact the aircraft flew into Los Angeles, “an area known
as a center of illegal drug activity,” is probable cause.
The prosecutor faulted Munnerlyn for not knowing what was in the boxes,
but government regulations do not require charter pilots to question or examine
baggage.
Munnerlyn wanted Wright to testify, but the government said he couldn’t.
“He was the only guy other than me who could tell the court that we didn’t
know each other. But Mayorkas said they couldn’t find him,” Munnerlyn says.
At a three-day trial that began last Oct. 30, Mayorkas sprang a surprise
witness. A ramp worker from Detroit’s Willow Run Airport testified that he had
seen Munnerlyn and Wright at his airport “in the fall of 1988.” The witness,
Steven Antuna, described Munnerlyn to a T, right down to the full reddish,
gray-streaked “Hemingway-like” beard he had when he was arrested.
The only problem was that Munnerlyn didn’t have a beard until the summer
of 1989.
Mrs. Munnerlyn and her 31-year-old son took the stand and refuted the
statements about the beard.
The six-member jury ruled that the plane should be returned to the pilot
and his wife.
In December, Mayorkas asked for another trial - and held on to the plane.
He said Munnerlyn’s family members had lied.
But Munnerlyn submitted 51 affidavits from FAA and Las Vegas officials,
U.S. marshals, bank officers, customers and business contacts sweating he did
not have a beard in the fall of 1988.
Photos and a TV news tape of Munnerlyn being interviewed after rescuing
a couple from Mexico after a hurricane, both taken that fall, showed him
beardless. But the government kept the plane.
Munnerlyn and his wife shuttled between Las Vegas and Los Angeles more
than 20 times.
“Each time we went we thought this nightmare would be over, but each time
there was some new game that the government wanted to play,” Mrs. Munnerlyn
says.
First, Mayorkas demanded the pilot pay the government $66,000 for his
plane.
“We didn’t have any money left and we couldn’t figure out why we should
have to pay the government anything, when a jury said we were innocent,”
Munnerlyn says.
Mayorkas lowered the “settlement” to $30,000, still far more then the
Munnerlyns could raise.
In April, Munnerlyn went to the U.S. Marshal Service’s aircraft storage
site in Midland, Texas. He climbed over, under and through his plane, which had
been torn apart during the DEA search for drugs.
“The whole thing was a mess,” he says. “That plane’s going to need about
$50,000 worth of work to bring it up to FAA standards again, to make it legal
to fly.”
In mid-June, Mayorkas made what he called a “final offer.”
“We have to pay the government $6,500 to get back my plane, that a jury
says shouldn’t have been taken in the first place, and they want to keep the
$8,500 that I was paid for the flight,” Munnerlyn says.
Last month, when asked if the settlement request was fair, Mayorkas said:
“If he was innocent, he would have taken reasonable steps to avoid any
involvement in illicit drug activity,” Mayorkas says.
But he wouldn’t detail what preventive measures Munnerlyn should have
taken. The Munnerlyns are trying to borrow the money to get their plane back.
No 10% bond mentioned, or dropped charges against the drug dealer.
But still the case sucks big time. To me, the government should have charged Munnerlyn or given his plane back as soon as they decided not to charge him.
Here’s a more compressed version. This later story says that the charges were dropped against the drug dealer!:
“Billy and Karon Munnerlyn owned and operated an air charter service. In
October 1989, Mr. Munnerlyn was hired to fly Albert Wright from Little
Rock, Arkansas to Ontario, California. DEA agents seized Mr. Wright’s
luggage and found $2.7 million inside. Both he and Mr. Munnerlyn were
arrested. Though the charges against Mr. Munnerlyn were quickly dropped
for lack of evidence, the government refused to release the airplane
(The charges against Mr. Wright, a convicted cocaine dealer, were
eventually dropped as well.). Mr. Munnerlyn spent over $85,000 in legal
fees trying to get his plane back. Though a Los Angeles jury awarded him
the return of his airplane — he had no knowledge that he was transporting
drug money — a U.S. District Judge reversed the jury’s verdict. Munnerlyn
was forced to declare bankruptcy and is now forced to drive a truck for a
living. He eventually spent $7,000 to buy his plane back. However, the
DEA caused about $100,000 of damage. The agency is not liable for the
damage, and there is no way (4) that Mr. Munnerlyn can raise the money
to re-start his business.”
http://venus.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/CUDS5/cud548.txt
Need to post that article about the pilot at the top of one of these seisure stories. Because it was posted so late on the thread, they can safely ignore it.
Its old news, but feel free to post it!
I haven’t seen anything via Google on Bill Munnerlynn lately. Wonder if he ever climbed back into the air charter business.
No. Medical marijuana is not legal in Ohio.
What's hard is that there's a higher standard of proof in a criminal trial (as there should be when a person's liberty is at stake).
Criminal asset forfeiture requires proof "beyond a reasonable doubt". Civil asset forfeiture only requires "a preponderance of the evidence".
And let's say they put money in the safe every paycheck, hers and his. That's twice per month times 12 months times 40 years or 960 times. Call it a thousand times he opened that safe.
But when the cops asked him to open the safe, he told them he couldn't remember the combination.
"Police discovered the money while searching the home the night Ricks shot Rock. Police had to break into Ricks’ safe after he couldn’t remember the combination, he said."
-- www.limaohio.com/story.php?IDnum=43071
Good find. That certainly weighs against the guy whose money was confiscated.
If a preponderance of the evidence does not show that the money was ill-gotten, then he'll get it back with interest, meaning he'll actually make money on the deal.
Think that'll happen?
It's hard to say. When you string together your tidbit from the previous post, plus the fact that he was robbed (which could be a coincidence), plus the drugs, I'd say there's a good chance the money is ill-gotten. From what we know, I'd call it 75-25 against him getting it back.
That certainly seems suspicious. However, that same night he had also experienced:
-A home invasion
-His son being stabbed
-Shooting one of the invaders
-Law enforcement searching his home
I think it's possible the guy was just too rattled to remember something as simple as the combination. It happens fairly often when people are experiencing unusually high stress.
Is that what happened here? Maybe not, but I don't think his forgetting the combination is as strong a sign of guilt as it might otherwise appear to be.
Thank you for lending your personal experience to this thread. I hope you don't mind answering a few more simple questions just so I (and everyone else) can try to get the whole picture of what is going on. Can you please tell me whether the following points are correct or incorrect?
1. At this point, Mr. Ricks' has not permanently lost the money. His money has merely been seized. He will not lose it permanently until a court orders forfeiture. Correct?
2. To obtain the forfeiture order, the FBI will be required to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the money represents the proceeds of criminal activities. The burden of proof will be on the FBI. Correct?
3. Mr. Ricks will be notified of this forfeiture hearing and will have a chance to produce evidence of his own showing that the money was merely his personal savings or was otherwise obtained innocently. Alternately, Mr. Ricks can remain silent and still win the money back if the FBI fails to meet its burden. Correct?
4. Mr. Ricks need not be charged with a crime to permanently lose the money through forfeiture. Since this process is defined as a "civil" procedure, the normal criminal standard of "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" is not required. Correct?
If all of these statements are correct, this paints a very different picture than what is given in the article.
Understand there is a new wrinkle with the Federal involvement but under state law the process is this:
Mr Ricks has not lost the money (yet) After the seizure has taken place, he should have been notified (via certified mail) that the state is starting forfeiture proceedings. By responding to the letter, (it used to be 10 days) he will have established a claim to the funds.
He will also be served with the date, time and courtroom of the forfeiture action. He is entitled to be represented by counsel. Defense counsel can cross examine the state’s witnesses and may also introduce exculpatory evidence, just as in criminal proceeding.
The burden of proof ALWAYS rests with the state. The state also has to publish a “notice of forfeiture” in a local paper to allow anyone else who may have a claim to the funds the ability to come forward and make a claim. The agency detective must also convince the county prosecutor or the prosecutor who handles forfeiture for the office that this is a valid case. The prosecutor is an officer of the court and I don’t know too many who would like to end up in front of a bar committee for playing fast and loose with the forfeiture laws. There are those two wonderful words called misfeasance and malfeasance.
Mr. Ricks has the right to remain silent just as in a criminal proceeding and may introduce witnesses to refute the state’s allegations.
The judge is the determiner of fact. Although the legal standard is lower, (preponderance of the evidence) if the state were to walk into court and tell the judge that they believe the money should be forfeited “just because” and didn’t have the necessary evidence to show this money was gotten illegally, most of the judges that I know (and I know all the sitting judges in Northwest Ohio on ALL the courts, would rip the state a new one and trust me, next time the detective walked into court or tried to get a search warrant, the sitting judge would grill him like a hot ham and cheese sandwich....oh and by the way, they do talk to one another. Ask any cop about certain detectives that have to go through hoops to get a search warrant because their previous cases are BS. Everyone in the courthouse knows who is a straight shooter and who is trying to serve it up.
Also, the “defendant” may file an appeal to a higher court. Usually there is a lag in the time the judge rules from the bench (if he/she does) and the time we get a “true copy” of the order. We cannot remove the money for deposit into the Law Enforcement Trust Fund until we have an original signed order in our hand.
On you last point about Mr Ricks not having to be charged with a crime, technically you are correct, but the only forfeitures that I’ve successfully pursued WITHOUT having a defendant charged are those where no one makes a claim to the money.
I once found 35K, in a garbage bag in the basement of a house we were doing a search warrant on. We seized the money and the owner of the house never claimed it. Therefore, we successfully forfeited it to the state.
One last thing, although just about any beat officer can seize a car or cash, they only start the process. We were on call 24/7 and when the Vice/Drug guys would get a substantial amount of money or thought there may be a substantial amount of money in the house, (usually over $5,000) they would call us out to start doing the processing. In any event, we were always the determiner of what cases went forward for forfeiture. I’ve pissed a lot of detectives off because their cases were weak. I’ve also been to several schools at the Federal Level and was a certified financial investigator. We spent a tremendous amount of resources trying to “follow the money trail” Believe me, working the street was a lot easier and less stressful.
While there are horror stories in regards to asset forfeiture and there probably are cases where the statute could have been abused, considering the sheer number of cases on an annual basis and the small number that don’t look right because of a newspaper story, the process doesn’t change.
It looks as if more information is coming out about this Lima case and I am anxious to see how it is resolved. I would bet this came out of the Federal Task Force in
Toledo. I know most of the guys assigned there and I know most of the Federal Prosecutors who may be handling this case. I also know the judges who are on the Federal bench in Northwest Ohio and I can tell you these guys (TF) better have all the “t’s” and “i’s” crossed and dotted or else they are in for a rough road ahead.
Hope this helps.
According to the drug dealer victim, yes.
"Maybe not, but I don't think his forgetting the combination is as strong a sign of guilt as it might otherwise appear to be."
For 40 years, a couple of times per month, he's been twirling that knob and now he forgets?" His wife didn't know the combination? He didn't have it written down somewhere?
5. If Mr. Ricks cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed by the court at no charge.
6. If Mr. Ricks wins the case, the money will be returned with interest. For him, that means he'll actually make money on the deal. I don't think he'll be compensated for the safe, but he might.
The author of the article might have been using pre-CAFRA 2000 rules or state forfeiture guidelines.
Thank you both for the clarification. I guess ACLU spokesmen don’t always have their information straight. What a surprise.
Again, all of those solutions seem obvious to a calm, comfortable mind. Given enough stress or being in a state of panic can can make even the simplest tasks seem difficult.
I've seen people forget their own birthdays or how to unbuckle a seat belt when they've been a little rattled, say from a fender bender or a minor traffic stop. Not being able to figure out how to open your safe doesn't seem too implausible after something more serious has happened, such as seeing your son get stabbed or shooting another human being in your home.
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