Joline Gutierrez Krueger at the Albuquerque Journal with the tale of the $16,000 in cash that “Joseph Rivers said he had saved and relatives had given him to launch his dream in Hollywood … seized during his trip out West not by thieves but by Drug Enforcement Administration agents during a stop at the Amtrak train station in Albuquerque. An incident some might argue is still theft, just with the government’s blessing.” The government hasn’t charged Rivers with anything and, under the rules of civil asset forfeiture, doesn’t have to:
“We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty,” [Albuquerque DEA agent Sean] Waite said. “It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty.”
Meanwhile, despite the U.S. Department of Justice’s promise to stop seizing bank accounts in future in cases where violations of laws against bank deposit “structuring” (keeping them under the $10,000 reporting threshold) are not connected with any underlying crime, it continues to hold on to money already in the seizure pipeline. That includes the $107,000 grabbed from Lyndon McLellan, who runs L&M Convenience Mart in rural North Carolina, according to the New York Times. “You work for something for 13, 14 years, and they take it in 13, 14 minutes.” More about the case from Jacob Sullum and Adam Bates.
A prosecutor wrote menacingly to McLellan’s lawyer about the publicity the case had been getting:
“Your client needs to resolve this or litigate it,” Mr. West wrote. “But publicity about it doesn’t help. It just ratchets up feelings in the agency.” He concluded with a settlement offer in which the government would keep half the money.
The Institute for Justice, which stood up for McLellan, has done a video:
In other forfeiture news, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the dangers of forfeiture laws (there to defend the laws: Fraternal Order of Police national president Chuck Canterbury, seen in this space just a few days ago defending police officers “bill of rights” laws) And the Maryland legislature has sent a forfeiture reform bill to the desk of Gov. Larry Hogan [Maryland Reporter]
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Mr. West’s comments are hard evidence of inappropriate behavior. The “feelings” of the agency are, or should be, irrelevant. West should be fired, and he should lose his ticket for unethical behavior.
Hopefully, the case will be litigated and a federal judge will have the decency to ask hard questions of Mr. West.
“Your client needs to resolve this or litigate it,” Mr. West wrote. “But publicity about it doesn’t help. It just ratchets up feelings in the agency.”
Hard evidence that the bureaucracy protects itself first. The public interest is a (distant) second to their interests in job protection. Yet so many — mostly on the left — continue to pretend that our vast administrative agencies be trusted to not only faithfully and impartially enforce the law, but to make the majority of new laws.
So the money gets a life sentence every time. Dang, that’s stiff.
Perhaps public defenders should be assigned to the money. The money is indigent after all, as the prosector is not about to allow the money to spend itself
I wonder what is meant by “But publicity about it doesn’t help. It just ratchets up feelings in the agency.”.
What feelings has people destroy a man’s life for a technicality. Lois Lerner was a hard working bureaucrat caught up in Republican crazy. The crazy woman who prosecuted the Freidman case was elected to congress. These are crazy times. Law and process broke down, and rational argument is a museum piece.
So the police pension funds could be seized the same way in the future, cuz it’s the money that’s guilty?
“What feelings has people destroy a man’s life for a technicality.”
Megalomania
Superiority
Invulnerability (to consequences)
Righteousness
I think you need a better category name for forfeiture stories, how about “do do process”?
Well, why did Willie Sutton rob banks? Because that is where the money is.
Why would a government agent try to put someone in jail, which will cost the state money to house and feed, when the government agent can just grab some money under whatever pretenses (forfeiture, structuring, blah blah), and the state comes out ahead?
[…] was a guest on Wednesday’s show, to discuss the latest abuses of asset forfeiture, in this case, by the DEA. So it would seem money is the root of all evil. Fact is, seized assets are used by […]