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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (99894)	2/11/2005 12:58:40 PM
From: Ish	Respond to of 793717

<<Surely there is more to this story. How can a man be convicted because a drug dealer used drug money to pay his rent. How could the leassor possibly know where the money came from.>> He knew the guys were dealing drugs because they were doing it openly in the parking lot next door. Police had pictures of him sitting on his own porch while the deals were going down in the lot next door.

To: JDN who wrote (99894)	2/11/2005 4:28:38 PM
From: captain_midnite	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793717

Facilitation or proceeds. Civil forfeiture, quasi-criminal litigation, basically in rem proceedings. I did this at the US Atty's Office way back in the dark ages last century. The laws then were much more liberal, I recall all that was required was a simple PC showing, burden would shift to the property owners to show the "thing" was innocent. We didn't lose many. Lots of petitions from inmates, written in longhand, trying to challenge the seizure. I recall things changed in the late 90's, after I worked on these cases. It was a real wild west mentality back then: grab the nice things, sort it out later. Lots of pressure from the various Fed agencies to keep the neat stuff, and the cash, always. The bank I audited had made commerical loans to fishing boat captains secured by their boats. As the boats were confiscated the bank LOST ITS COLLATERAL and had to write off the loans. The bank had no involvement whatsoever in the drug deals and knew nothing about them I am guessing this was before 2000. The forfeiture statutes were reformed at least once in recent years, watered down from the original controlling law that came about in the 70's. One of the changes did transform/streamline the innocent-owner defense. It's still a fruitful tool for the Feds, just slightly less so compared to what is once was.