Follow
That
Story:
Asset
Forfeiture
Reform
a
Big
Hit
at
Southern
Legislative
Conference
11/24/00
Given the success of asset forfeiture reform initiatives in Utah and Oregon in the recent elections, it was no surprise that last Saturday's asset forfeiture reform panel at the Southern Legislative Conference (SLC) got an attentive hearing from legislators, who had gathered for the group's annual fall meeting in Coral Gables, Florida. (See http://www.drcnet.org/wol/160.html#southernlegislators for last week's heads-up on the conference.) Afterwards, lawmakers from several states vowed to review asset forfeiture laws at home. "This is almost as controversial as the presidential election," Maryland Delegate Dana Denbow (D-Montgomery County) told the Kansas City Star, whose Karen Dillon has written extensively on abuses in state asset forfeiture programs. Denbow, who heads the SLC's Intergovernmental Affairs Committee and moderated the four-person panel, put asset forfeiture reform on the group's agenda at the request of Missouri state Sen. Henry Wiggins (D-Kansas City). Wiggins authored asset forfeiture reform legislation that is pending in Missouri. The focus of Wiggins' bill and of his testimony on the panel was state and local police abuse of state asset forfeiture laws. Many states mandate that funds from seizures be dedicated to specific ends, typically education. The Star's Dillon, in a series of reports earlier this year (http://www.kcstar.com/projects/drugforfeit/), showed how state and local police evade state requirements by handing seized goods over to federal agencies. The federal agencies then return roughly 80% to the local police agency. Funds that under state laws should have gone to a specified program thus end up in the hands of police agencies. The panel included rare appearances by attorneys from the Justice and Treasury departments. Both agencies have been reluctant to defend their programs in public forums. But Steven Schlesinger, a trial attorney with the Department of Justice Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering division, attempted to do so despite sometimes skeptical questioning from attending legislators and harsh attacks from co-panelists. Armed with hand-outs showing that asset forfeiture had garnered $2 billion for state and local law enforcement agencies since 1986, Schlesinger told his audience, "That is money that didn't have to come out of your taxpayers' pockets. States, communities and law enforcement agencies have benefited tremendously from this program." Schlesinger also described the value of seizures handed over to federal agencies to circumvent state laws as a small proportion of the total. But figures earlier provided to the Kansas City Star by the Department of Justice showed that federal agencies got $208 million from state and local police in one three-year period alone. Such numbers suggest that as much as half the $2 billion could be the result of police evading state laws. Schlesinger also drew flak when he suggested that the fault lay with the state laws. Missouri, for example, "has a major loophole," he argued, in that it requires a felony conviction before property can be forfeited. Police who cannot gain convictions then turn to federal law, which allows confiscation without conviction, he explained. Those comments prompted a sharp response from fellow panel member Steven Kessler, a New York City criminal defense attorney and author of two works on forfeiture law. "What a novel idea" that someone must be convicted of a crime before his property can be seized, said Kessler. "I advocate that loophole to each and every one of you in this room," Kessler advised, adding that requiring a criminal conviction protects the public from law enforcement abuses. Several of the 40-odd legislators who attended the session told the Star that they would act on the issue. Tennessee state Senator Douglas Henry (D-Nashville) said he would ask that his state's laws be reexamined, and state Sen. Jim Hill, a Democrat from small town Nashville, Arkansas, said he had already asked Kessler to review the Arkansas statute. Virginia state Senator Yvonne Washington (D-Norfolk) told the Star, "I'm horrified by what I hear. This sounds like legalized extortion." She said she will send the Virginia statute to outside groups such as the NAACP for review. But Maryland's Delegate Denbow said he believed the only way to end the police end-runs was to reform federal asset forfeiture law. He told the Star he had asked Wiggins to help draft a policy statement asking Congress to address who should get the booty and how to separate federal from state seizures. That statement would be voted on at the SLC's annual conference next summer.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
