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The law of civil forfeiture allows police and prosecutors to seize and keep cash, cars, homes, businesses and property of all kinds without ever criminally charging or convicting the owners. As originally conceived, it was to be a deterrent by which law enforcement would transfer the ill-gotten gains of crime to the public treasury. But, as so often happens with governmental power, it has transmuted over the years into a semi-criminal operation in and of itself. In 2014, Chris Sourovelis’ son was arrested for selling $40 worth of drugs. Three weeks later, the Philadelphia police forcibly evicted the entire Sourovelis...

WASHINGTON — Siding with a small time drug offender in Indiana whose $42,000 Land Rover was seized by law enforcement officials, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the Constitution places limits on civil forfeiture laws that allow states and localities to take and keep private property used to commit crimes. Civil forfeiture is a popular way to raise revenue, and its use has been the subject of widespread criticism across the political spectrum. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Eighth Amendment, which bars “excessive fines,” limits the ability of the federal government to seize property. On Wednesday, the...

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case that may rein in abusive property seizures by state and local governments through the highly controversial legal tool known as civil asset forfeiture. The case at issue involves a man named Tyson Timbs, who sold $225 worth of heroin to undercover police officers on two occasions, as a means of raising money to support his own drug habit. Police arrested Timbs while he was driving to a third drug deal, and he ultimately pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a year of home confinement and five years of...

After four years of litigation, city agrees to end “policing for profit,” ensure due process and establish $3 million compensation fund for victims of city’s forfeiture practices Share Facebook Twitter Email Print Related Case Philadelphia Forfeiture Press Release    |    September 18, 2018 Andrew Wimer Assistant Director of Communications PHILADELPHIA—The Institute for Justice (IJ) today announced a major settlement with the city of Philadelphia, ending the city’s draconian civil forfeiture machine. In documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania today, city officials agreed to a set of reforms that will end the perverse financial...

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Utah Supreme Court to decide whether police can avoid ban on taking money from motorists not charged with any crime by calling in the feds. Voters in Utah banned state officials from seizing property from people who committed no crime almost two decades ago -- or so they thought. Ever since Initiative B passed with 69 percent of the vote, police have evaded its provisions by seizing cash, turning it over to federal authorities, and then taking a cut of the proceeds in a way that is prohibited under state law. The Utah Supreme Court last week held oral arguments...

Courts in 14 Alabama counties awarded $2.2 million to law enforcement agencies through civil asset forfeiture actions filed in 2015 – a practice some Alabama lawmakers is hoping to end. Civil asset forfeiture essentially allows law enforcement take and keep property even if its owner isn’t convicted of a crime. On Wednesday, the Alabama Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill to change the civil asset forfeiture process in hopes of protecting the property and due process rights of Alabamians. Under current state law, law enforcement agencies can seize property on the mere suspicion that it was either involved in a...

The national revulsion against abusive civil asset forfeiture has not kept police from trying to pocket as much as they can from people who are innocent of any wrongdoing. A recent case shows how police can pressure motorists into waiving their right to contest seizure of money during a highway traffic stop. Phil Parhamovich is a musician who lives in Wisconsin. For years, he’s been saving money for a music studio for his band – “The Dirt Brothers” – and had accumulated $91,800 by early 2017. He doesn’t much trust financial institutions and did not want to leave that large...

DENVER -- The Problem Solvers have uncovered a city law that's making Denver millions of dollars before defendants have even been convicted of a crime. The Denver statute is called a Public Nuisance Abatement Ordinance and it allows police to confiscate property, usually cars, for a crime you may later be found innocent of. It's exactly what happened to 57-year-old Semere Fremichael, a native of Eritrea. The immigrant from East African has been driving a taxi in Denver for the past 28-years. In April, he was arrested in an undercover prostitution sting. An undercover female cop tapped on Fremichael's taxi...

A lucrative battle against Mexican drug cartels is being fought on the sides of an interstate in three of Alabama's more rural counties. Civil asset forfeiture has come under fire in recent years, as some law enforcement agencies across the country have deployed the tactic in ways that have been widely criticized as abusive. But a small drug task force operating in Greene, Marengo and Sumter counties - collectively, Alabama's 17th Judicial Circuit - has leveraged the practice to take millions of dollars worth of cash, drugs and other property off the street in recent years, much of which they...

Civil forfeiture remains a controversial issue in America since it's "a process by which the government can take and sell your property without ever convicting, or even charging, you with a crime." The procedures are civil, which means defendants do not receive the same protections given to criminal defendants.Connecticut has put an end to this procedure when the legislature passed a law that bans civil forfeiture without a criminal conviction.Video - "Policing for Profit Visualized: How Big Is Civil Forfeiture?"The Law Democrat Governor Dannel Malloy signed HB 7146 into law on Monday after it "passed both the House and Senate...

Like a bad skin disease that spreads rapidly once it takes hold, civil asset forfeiture grew rapidly for several decades, in the 80s and 90s especially. Once law enforcement agencies figured out how to turn it into an easy means of padding their budgets without much public scrutiny, they ran with it. Forfeiture laws originally meant to allow the confiscation of the great wealth amassed by drug overlords, were increasingly applied to seize small amounts of property owned by people who were merely suspected of having some connection with illegal activity. Many thousands of innocent Americans have had cash, cars,...

Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation Wednesday that will make it tougher for prosecutors and law enforcement to seize cash and property from people suspected of a crime, effectively overhauling the state's civil forfeiture laws despite opposition from state prosecutors. Ducey signed the measure after being caught between the state legislature and county prosecutors. House Bill 2477 by Republican Rep. Eddie Farnsworth is meant to reform rules dictating when prosecutors can seize someone's assets. Officers can currently seize property based on suspicion alone without the need of a conviction or a charge. Police and prosecutors acquire Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization or...

The legitimate purpose of government? It is to protect citizens from force and fraud, to defend individuals against violent and criminal attacks on their persons and property, and, beyond that, to leave them at liberty to pursue their own happiness. Tyranny, conversely, is what we call governments that engage in force and fraud, committing violent and criminal acts against innocent people — even when those crimes are cloaked in the costume of legality. In these United States, at this modern moment in time, which is it? Do we live in a legitimately governed country or an abject tyranny? Or is...

Imagine if something like this happened to you. You are away on a trip when you get word that your son was involved in a serious accident. You rush home and find out that he had taken your late-model SUV, driven it while drunk, and wrecked the vehicle beyond the point of repair. The dumb kid is all right, but facing charges for his criminal drunk driving. But that’s not all. Because your vehicle was involved in the commission of a crime, it is subject to seizure under the state’s civil asset forfeiture law. Therefore, you stand to lose big...

Justice Clarence Thomas questions the constitutionality of taking property from motorists with civil procedures. The idea that the government can take away someone's car or cash without due process offends at least one member of the US Supreme Court. In a statement Monday, Justice Clarence Thomas called on his colleagues to revisit civil asset forfeiture, the process that allows prosecutors to go after assets allegedly linked in some way to a crime. The justice argued the system has been widely abused. "Civil proceedings often lack certain procedural protections that accompany criminal proceedings, such as the right to a jury trial...

Sen. Rand Paul has long taken the lead in calling for the reform of civil asset forfeiture laws, a controversial police practice in which authorities basically steal the property of citizens without due process and little recourse. Billions have been seized from citizens by the police based on nothing more than suspicion, which many see as a direct violation of the Fifth Amendment. It’s state-sanctioned theft. “Under civil forfeiture laws, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent,” says the Institute for Justice’s Scott Bullock. On Thursday, Sen. Paul reintroduced FAIR (Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration) Act, which specifically addresses...

So, you’re sitting on millions of dollars’ worth of confiscated property. You want to give your workers a raise, but federal rules bar you from using seized assets to fund salaries. What’s an attorney general to do? Well, if you’re Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, you turn to a strange source for the solution: the very U.S. Justice Department officials who are responsible for enforcing the rules you want to skirt. They told Herring he could use the funds to cover routine costs “so long as your overall budget does not decrease.” Herring promptly started using seized funds to cover...

In a White House meeting with county sheriffs from around the nation on February 7, President Trump sided with the law enforcement community in opposing change in the nation’s civil asset forfeiture laws. Here is the transcript of that meeting, and the president’s flippant attitude (he joked about destroying the career of a state senator in Texas who had proposed a bill to reform civil asset forfeiture) and eagerness to stay in the good graces of the sheriffs are very bad news. Shortly after the election, I wrote that Trump should become a proponent of civil asset forfeiture and defang...

By a very large measure, Americans oppose civil asset forfeiture. They think that it is wrong for the government to take property from someone who has not been convicted of any crime. The most recent evidence showing that is found in a recent Cato Institute survey on public attitudes toward the police and in it, 84 percent said they oppose allowing the police to seize a person’s property on mere suspicion that he may have been involved in crime. Unfortunately, it seems that Donald Trump’s choice for Attorney General, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, is among that small minority of...