Scott Bullock, Vice President of the FEAR board of directors and senior staff attorney for the Institute for Justice, will be arguing the unconstitutionality of the police and prosecutors keeping the proceeds of forfeiture.

Below is the press release from his office.


INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE
1717 PENNSYLVANIA AVE., N.W.	     SUITE 200	WASHINGTON, D.C.          20006	(202) 955-1300	FAX (202) 955-1329
HOME PAGE:  WWW.IJ.ORG
 
MEDIA ADVISORY

EVENT:		Appeals Court Oral Argument in Challenge
To New Jersey’s Civil Forfeiture Law

TIME/DATE:		9:30 a.m./Wednesday, March 31, 2004 
			
PLACE:		Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division
Justice Center (10 Main Street, Room 408)
Hackensack, New Jersey

ATTORNEYS:	Scott Bullock, Senior Attorney, Institute for Justice
			Joseph M. Chiarello, Jacob & Chiarello

CONTACT:		John Kramer or	Lisa Knepper
			Institute for Justice, (202) 955-1300

SUMMARY:

On Wednesday, March 31, the New Jersey Appellate Court will hear a case that will decide whether the state’s civil forfeiture law dangerously transforms law enforcement priorities away from fair and impartial administration of justice and instead toward the pursuit of property and profit.  The case before the three-judge panel of the Appellate Division examines whether New Jersey prosecutors and police are entitled to keep the money and property confiscated from individuals through the state’s civil forfeiture law, thus giving them a direct financial stake in the outcome of forfeiture efforts.  In December 2002, a state trial court struck down the law as unconstitutional because the provision violates the Due Process clauses of the U.S. and New Jersey constitutions.

>From 1998 to 2000, New Jersey police and prosecutors collected an astonishing nearly $32 million in property and currency through the application of the state’s civil forfeiture law.  During that same period, on average, close to 30 percent of the discretionary budgets of county prosecutor offices came from civil forfeiture proceeds.  As Superior Court Judge G. Thomas Bowen of Salem County recognized in his opinion, forfeiture money has been used for “rent for a motor pool crime scene facility, office furniture, telecommunications and computer equipment, automobile purchase, fitness and training equipment purchase, a golf outing, food, including food for seminars and meetings, and expenses of law enforcement conferences, at various locations.”

	“Property owners must be protected from this kind of conflict of interest and perverse incentive system,” said Scott Bullock, senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest law firm that is litigating the New Jersey case.  “Police and prosecutors must make decisions on the basis of justice, not on the potential for profit.”

	In his opinion Judge Bowen also determined: “In theory and in practice, there is no limitation upon the motivation for enlargement to which a county prosecutor is subject in deciding upon seizure of property . . . .  This court concludes, that the augmentation of the county prosecutors’ budgets . . . provides to those in prosecutorial functions financial interests which are not remote as to escape the taint of impermissible bias in enforcement of the laws, prohibited by the Due Process clauses of the New Jersey and U.S. Constitution.”
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