It's only alarmist when it isn't happening to you or someone you love. It happened to my nephew, several thousand dollars in cash seized from his college dorm room (he was a bartender, but should it matter? it isn't illegal to have cash is it?), no charges filed and it would have cost him more than they seized to attempt to get it returned. Back in the 80s, when I was in high school they seized a local family's home because someone said they bought acid from a boy who lived there. It made big news back then, this stuff was new. The family lost the legal battle, they couldn't prove they didn't know their kid was selling acid. The authorities couldn't prove he was selling acid either, but that doesn't matter in these cases. To have your property returned, you must prove you are innocent or ignorant which are both almost impossible things to prove.
Why would it cost him significantly to have it returned? According to US code, a single note is all it takes to force a court procedure where the prosecutor has to demonstrate a nexus between the money and a crime. What would it cost your brother to go to court by himself? What would he have to lose?
Look, I see the issue here. Clearly, if the government was randomly taking thousands of dollars from people and forcing them to go to court to keep it, that would be a miscarriage of justice. But that's probably not what happens in reality.
Under what auspices was your nephew's cash seized? What's the other side of this story? Is there really not another side to this story?
There is. A kid left the frat and drowned in a river (it was a frat room not a dorm room). Drugs were suspected. I'm not sure why. They executed a warrant and took the money. BTW the autopsy found no drugs in the dead student's system.
Anyway, you make this sound so simple, just send a note and go to court. Most people are extremely intimidated by this stuff and they just want it to end. Especially when you've already been violated and had your reputation impugned. The advice they were given was it wasn't worth it.
"In 80 percent of such cases, the owner is not charged. The standard of proof to be met by the authorities is the minimal "probable cause" standard. If the owner wishes to regain possession, he has the onus of proving in court that the property is "innocent"; his standard of proof is higher: a preponderance of the evidence. In some cases, property has been seized for acts someone other than the owner performed."
http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/pr-ma-hy.html
edit: I doubt they are doing this randomly, but they seem to be opportunistic and they do target certain types of people - youth, poor, minorities. The right to seize valuable assets is corrupting in nature. I think you'd see it drop dramatically if the government wasn't allowed to keep the assets as a fund raising mechanism.
Again: that 80% stat? I'm certain it's true, but it's meaningless. The stat you want is, how often are challenges to seizures denied. Because --- and I'm not saying this is what happened with your nephew --- it is very likely the reason that 80% of those seizures don't match up with a conviction is that the people whose assets are seized are in fact criminals.
Recognizing that doesn't mean I think civil asset forfeiture is problem-free or that Radley Balko doesn't have an argument with his stories on this issue. But you can't just cite that stat as if it opened and shut the case.
I agree that one sensible step to take would be to foreclose on the use of the assets as local funding mechanisms. I agree entirely with that.
Finally: I think your nephew was given bad advice.
I don't think it matters much whether many challenges are successful. When it takes years and costs more in unrecoverable legal fees (it's a civil court case, not merely a request) than most seized property is actually worth, very few victims are going to bother.
I don't know how bad it is at the state level, but according to the US Code, at the federal level it shouldn't take years; there's a rigid statutory timeline on hearings, measured in increments of 30 days.
> In some cases, property has been seized for acts someone other than the owner performed.
My first father in law (that sounds weird) had a SUV stolen. On the same afternoon, it was involved in two robberies - one supermarket, one bank - and one murder (one of the robbers was shot by his colleagues). It took him a while to get the car back.
