An "Oldie but Goodie", presented again so that folks new to the subject can
read a good background article.

From PBS's "Frontline":

Reining in Forfeiture: Common Sense Reform in the War on Drugs by Kyla Dunn

<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/forfeiture.html
>

Some extracts:

"Still, the search turned up no drugs of any kind, and the officers finally
told Ramirez that he was free to go--but not before confiscating $6,000 of
his money in the name of the federal war on drugs in a process known as
"forfeiture." Despite check stubs that he says prove that the money came
from a car accident settlement reached several months before, and bank
records showing that it was withdrawn from his account just prior to the
Missouri trip, Ramirez has, to this day, been unable to get his money
returned."


"But it is the laxer provisions of the federal law that, until recently,
have created enormous hardships for innocent people caught up in the
system. Many property owners have faced years of difficult and costly
litigation before winning back money, cars, homes and businesses that were
never involved in a crime. And others have never had their property
returned at all. It is these cases, tracked by groups like the American
Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers, and highlighted in congressional hearings, that have fueled the
drive for reform at a national level."

"Furthermore, the high cost of contesting a forfeiture often posed an
insurmountable problem, as it did for Rudy Ramirez. In order to take his
case to court, Ramirez would have had to post a "cost bond" of 10% of the
value of the property seized--and if he lost the case he would lose the
bond. But for a landscaping truck driver who is barely getting by, scraping
together another $600 was no minor hurdle. "I don't have money to be
wasting," says Ramirez. What's more, unlike a defendant in a criminal
trial, Ramirez was not entitled to a government-appointed attorney if he
could not afford a private lawyer. He would have had to hire the attorney
at his own expense--and as Bruce Simon, a Missouri lawyer to whom Ramirez
went for help, explains, no lawyer in the country would likely take that
case.

"Generally speaking, it's not worth it unless you've had twenty-five to
thirty thousand dollars taken away," says Simon. It would have cost a
minimum of around $10,000 to take a case like Ramirez' to court, says
Simon, so the $6,000 he would have gotten back wouldn't even cover his
lawyer's fees. As a result of these blunt financial realities, Simon has
seen many innocent owners simply give up without a fight when faced with a
system that provides "no effective remedy" for them. "


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