In Minnesota, if you are accused of a drug-related crime but not convicted, you can lose any property that the police and prosecutors say was used for the crime.
Seems prone to abuse to you?
It does to a lot of people. There’s a bill to try to fix that in the Legislature – to require convictions before forfeiting property.
It’s getting flak from “Law Enforcement” and “Prosecutors”.
Guess why (emphasis added)?
Backers say the state’s civil forfeiture laws are long overdue for a little due process. The laws have become a growing source of cash for law enforcement agencies and were famously abused by the now-defunct Metro Gang Strike Force, which paid out $840,000 in settlements to victims who had their property illegally seized.
I suspect if you asked a whooooole lot of people on the street what the standard was, they’d say “conviction”. They’d be wrong.
Under current law, police or sheriffs can keep property, vehicles and cash seized in drug cases or drive-by shootings — regardless of the outcome of the criminal case. If a suspect is found not guilty, they can still lose their property in civil court unless they can prove it was not involved in a crime. The bill would require prosecutors to return the property if there is no criminal conviction associated with the seizure.
And when I explain this to people who don’t follow these sorts of things, they’re non-plussed. Then, frequently, upset; you’re not actually “innocent until proven guilty”:
You have a kid who starts dealing a little weed? And he gets on the County Attorney’s radar to the point where the prosecutor decides to try to squeeze him and those close to him to get to someone else?
Adios, property.
But it’s for the children. Er, I mean, for law enforcement!
Lee McGrath, executive director of the Institute for Justice’s Minnesota chapter, said that between 2003 and 2010, law enforcement agencies supplemented their budgets with $30 million gained through forfeitures. That, McGrath said, represents a 75 percent increase despite a small drop in the crime rate. The bill has received broad bipartisan support.
And who opposes the bill?
[County Attorneys Association] Executive Director John Kingrey said his organization supports fairness and transparency in the state’s forfeiture laws, but that the bill is ripe for abuse.
“Drug dealers are smart people,” Kingrey said. “One of the challenges we have is we walk in the door with cocaine and $10,000 sitting on the table, with five guys saying ‘That’s not mine.’ Four of them get convicted, and the fifth guy says ‘That money was mine, I wasn’t convicted, give me the dough.’ ”
Good heavens. That might require the county attorneys to do their jobs.
I’m going to emphasize this next bit:
It’s not just money, Kingrey said. Acquittals could also put guns back on the street.
Does anyone need to have this translated? “Being found not guilty of a crime means people might get their property back?”
Anyway – they’re all lawyers, so the truth will be found under many interlocking layers of bullshit. And here it is:
“Conviction is a very jazzy term, but it’s more nuanced,” Kingrey said.
“Conviction” may be jazzy.
“Innocent until proven guilty” is an AC/DC riff, plain and loud and unadorned and unmistakeable. No conviction, no forfeiture.
Cut the weasel words, County Attorneys. You’re running a licence to print money, and you don’t want the peasants to mess with a good thing.
Mitch, Mitch, Mitch. You just don’t understand. In the post-Kelo world we live in, they’re not seizing your property, they’re just seizing small pieces of paper for the public good. That cash they found on the floor? They’re not seizing “money”, they’re just pocketing the paper representation of it. That car they took? They didn’t take the “car”, they just seized a piece of paper labelled “title”.
Besides, in our new Living Constitution the Fourth Amendment is whatever King Barry and the government says it is. Now kneel down peasant and learn your place.
I know of a smaller city outside the Metro where the patrol officers have been issued Wilson Combat custom pistols, purchased by the Chief/department with the spoils of forfeited property. That’s a $2.5K + gun vs. a ~ $500.00 gun. I don’t know how much of the money came from the sale of property that was forfeited the result of a conviction or otherwise, makes one wonder though.
I think that some budget reductions for law enforcement are in order then. If they can supplement their respective budgets with illegally confiscated property of provate citizens, then it’s only fair.
Don’t forget that the vehicle driven by a person convicted of certain more serious DWI offenses may also be forfeited. If the car is particularly nice it is forfeited. If it’s a high mileage piece junk it is not.
I, too am dismayed by anything that resembles profiteering on the part of law enforcement. Sky-high traffic fines, at least to me, fall in the same category.
Lee put up a very thoughtful reply on FB to someone saying “what about the 5 guys hypothetical?!?!” I can’t get to FB on my work computer, and I can’t copy/paste a wad of text on the Kindle. So typey-typey-type:
“Mr Kingrey is an honest and thoughtful representative of the prosecutor’s trade association. But this is easy-peasy because his hypothetical is an unrealistic and emotional response to the reporter’s inquiry.
1) It is unrealistic because the police will arrest and the prosecutors will convict all five guys for cocaine possession and crimes related to distribution. There is no basis for the fifth guy not being charged or being acquitted,
2) Similarly, under Minnesota law, the fifth guy would have to file an innocent owner claim to get back the money if he were not charged. Mr. Kingrey would quickly concede that the prosecutors could easily show that the fifth guy had the requisite knowledge of the crime to lose his claim as an innocent owher; and
3) Finally, it is not factual. The average sezure in Minnesota is only $1,200. more than 95% of seizures are less than $5,000. Clearly his response was emotional because Mr Kingrey normally does not perpetuate the myth that forfeiture is predominantly used to stop big-time drug rings.”
“Conviction is a very jazzy term, but it’s more nuanced,”
“Criminal” is another jazzy term coppers like to dance to, so is “gang”.
According to the current definition of “gang” adopted by Minnesota Sheriffs’ Association, the Boy Scouts are a gang. And if used in the same context they apply it, the SPPD is a “criminal enterprise”, and MPD is a “criminal empire”.
This crap has been going on for years, but I’m very happy to see that people are waking up. The police are not your friends, folks. At the very best, they are a necessary evil that requires very close supervision.
Those forfeiture laws are insane. We need fewer police and fewer rules to obey.
And there is no way that property should go to “law enforcement” absent a conviction. Tell your “representatives” to introduce legislation to repeal these scumbag forfeiture laws – and to vote to slash funding for “law enforcement” as well. Replace every 3rd cop with a road-maintenance worker and hang a tenth of Minnesota’s county attorneys from the Smith Avenue bridge.
Lessee…..instead of going after real cases of importance, they’re getting penny-ante drug dealers and setting speed traps. And we wonder why morale is often low in police departments…..
To the question of “what about the guy who wrongly gets his gun back because he wasn’t convicted?”, my response is “he just saw his four buddies put in jail. Think it might give him an incentive to find a better profession?”
In other words, one would have to infer that Mr. Kingrey would qualify for the New London, Connecticut police department, where there is actually an upper limit for observed intelligence among police officers. And again, we wonder why the tough cases are not being solved…….