Several state lawmakers have addressed the issue of civil property forfeiture this year, but only one has made a significant change. Property seized as part of a joint investigation may be transferred or returned to a federal agency for forfeiture only if the estimated gross value of the seized property exceeds seventy-five thousand dollars. Since a prosecutor can charge a person with a crime in a criminal case and charge his or her cases in a civil case, issues such as double jeopardy have been raised. In addition, there has been discussion as to whether confiscation of property is considered a fine or a sanction in the legal sense. This distinction was made by the Supreme Court in United States v. Bajakajian, who decreed that criminal confiscation could be considered both a kind of fine and a punishment, while civil confiscation was not conceived as a punishment of a person, but as a “legal fiction of punishment of property”. [24] Accordingly, the Court held that civil forfeitures to remedy the situation were not considered a form of fine. [24] [25] These proceedings are conducted in rem or against the immovable property itself and not personally or against the owner of the immovable property. For this reason, civil forfeiture names often seem strange, such as United States v. Eight Rhodesian Stone statues, because they belong to the defendant. This decision could be very important: civil forfeiture is a process fraught with abuse, and unsurprisingly, studies have shown that the practice disproportionately targets people of color.
And because the police generally retain the proceeds of confiscation, they have a perverse incentive to confiscate property without regard for the rights of the individual. Since 2014, 37 states and the District of Columbia have reformed their civil forfeiture laws: Flynn said prosecutors don`t want innocent people to lose their property, but that civil property forfeiture should be changed, not abolished. The government can seize money directly from a bank account. One way to do this is if there are a large number of cash deposits that government investigators suspect are structured to avoid deposits over $10,000, as deposits over that amount must be reported to the federal government. However, legitimate businesses may regularly have large cash deposits. Asset forfeiture aims to deprive criminals of the proceeds of their crimes, break the financial backbone of organized crime syndicates and drug cartels, and recover assets that can be used to compensate victims and deter crime. The confiscation of civil property has its roots in maritime and customs law, but modern practices of confiscation of civilian property were introduced by the Integrated Crime Control Act of 1984. This Act established the Department of Justice (DOJ) Asset Forfeiture Fund for proceeds of assets and the Fair Sharing Program. Fair sharing allows state and local law enforcement agencies to transfer seized assets related to federal crimes to federal agencies, which then conduct forfeiture proceedings. Once assets are forfeited to the federal government, the proceeds are paid into an appropriate forfeiture fund, and state and local agencies receive a percentage of the total, depending on the nature and specific circumstances of a particular case. A June 2019 study found that a more equitable distribution of funds does not lead to more solved crimes and does not improve overall police effectiveness.
Such means also do not lead to a decrease in drug use. And rates of degradation are linked to local economic performance and increase when the local economy suffers, suggesting that such tactics are aimed at raising incomes rather than fighting crime. [31] In her relatively brief opinion to the Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg rejected the Indiana Supreme Court`s finding that civil forfeiture was lawful. Ginsburg — who spoke on behalf of eight of the court`s nine members — concluded that the excessive fine clause, like the vast majority of the Bill of Rights, is a fundamental right that applies to states under the 14th Amendment Due Process Clause. And since the Court had already ruled in a federal case in 1993 that civil forfeiture, even partial, was governed by the excessive fines clause, the application of the clause to the states facilitated the case. Under federal law, there are three (3) types of forfeiture: criminal forfeiture, civil forfeiture and administrative forfeiture. For more information, see the following table. It is now possible for a drug dealer to serve his sentence in a confiscation-funded prison after being arrested by officers who were driving a confiscated car while working in a confiscation-funded operation.
According to journalist Sarah Stillman, a major turning point in the confiscation activity was the passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Crime Act of 1984. [13] This law allowed local and state law enforcement agencies to divide seized assets and money. [9] Civil forfeiture has allowed federal and local governments “to extort swift penalties from white-collar criminals and provide redress to victims of fraud,” Stillman said. [9] From 1985 to 1993, authorities seized $3 billion in cash and other property under the federal asset forfeiture program, which included civil and criminal forfeiture. [13] The methods were supported by the Reagan administration as a crime-fighting strategy.