State Steals Life-Savings from Innocent Musician

Phil Parhamovich is a musician from Madison, Wisconsin. Over the years, he saved up $91,800, only to have it seized by Wyoming Highway Patrol during a routine traffic stop near Cheyenne.

Phil was never accused of, or charged with, a crime. Yet, he found himself in the fight of his life to recover the money that belonged to him.

Luckily, Phil reached out to the Institute for Justice (IJ), and together we got back Phil’s life savings. But the fight is far from over; Phil’s story only highlights the urgent need to end civil forfeiture.

An Unjust Practice 

Civil forfeiture allows law enforcement to take and keep cash, cars and other property without ever charging someone with a crime. Before that fateful March day, Phil had never heard of civil forfeiture. He was just a musician driving through Wyoming to a show in Salt Lake City. Phil had big plans for his life savings, which he brought with him for safekeeping.

He wanted to put a down payment on a historic music studio in Madison where bands like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage recorded albums. Phil had dreams of opening up the recording studio to other bands and living in an apartment above.

But Phil’s dream of owning the music studio came to a halt during a windy drive on I-80. Battling famous Wyoming wind, Phil was having a hard time staying in his lane. He was soon pulled over by Wyoming Highway Patrol for failing to signal a lane change. During the stop, the trooper detained Phil in the patrol car and aggressively questioned him about details of his trip. The questions were not even related to the reason for pulling Phil over.

The trooper then circled Phil’s minivan with a drug-sniffing dog. After what appeared to be coaching with a tennis ball, the dog alerted to the van and provided the trooper with an excuse to search it. Neither the trooper nor other officers assisting him found anything illegal during the search. All they could find were Phil’s life savings stowed away inside a music speaker. Carrying cash is not a crime. But Phil had no way of knowing that. So, when the trooper implied that carrying cash was illegal, Phil—scared that he could be arrested—told the trooper that the money did not belong to him.

Seizing on this opportunity, the officers provided Phil with a way out. If he were to sign a pre-printed waiver form “giving” Wyoming law enforcement the money that they just found, he would be free to go. Bizarrely, the waiver stated: “I . . . the owner of the property or currency described below, desire to give this property or currency, along with any and all interests and ownership that I may have in it, to the State of Wyoming, Division of Criminal Investigation, to be used for narcotics law enforcement purposes.” At least two states—Texas and Virginia—have banned law enforcement from using such roadside waivers to pressure motorists to sign away their property.

One of the officers told Phil that if he signed the form, he would be free to go. And so, on the side of the road and with no attorney present, Phil signed the waiver. The officers wrote Phil a $25 ticket for not wearing his seatbelt and sent him on his way.

The Upside-Down World of Civil Forfeiture 

Four days after the traffic stop, Phil tried to revoke the waiver and get his money back, explaining what happened and asking to be notified of any court hearings. But Wyoming officials never sent Phil a notice regarding the court proceedings, even though they knew exactly where he lived and how to contact him.

This is the upside-down world of civil forfeiture: it creates a perverse incentive for law enforcement to seize and keep as much property as possible. And even though Wyoming passed modest reforms last year, law enforcement found a way to dodge these reforms through the use of roadside waivers.

Hours after IJ announced it was representing Phil, a state judge ordered the government to give back Phil’s money. The Wyoming Attorney General’s office quickly agreed to do so. This lack of serious objection on the part of the government is not surprising. Returning seized property when facing a major lawsuit is a common practice among law enforcement across the nation, and it only perpetuates civil forfeiture.

By returning the property to those who are fortunate to find good representation, law enforcement is able to prevent a negative ruling that would chip away at civil forfeiture and thwarts the cushy revenue stream.

As news about Phil’s fight with Wyoming law enforcement spread, it even reached the Wyoming state legislature, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers pledged to outlaw the use of roadside waivers to force law enforcement to comply with its recently-passed reforms. One of the legislators, Sen. Anthony Bouchard, went even further, saying that while the pledge is a good start, more has to be done to prevent civil forfeiture abuses.

Even though Phil emerged victoriously, most victims of civil forfeiture are not as lucky. Only 14 states have completely abolished their civil forfeiture programs and Congress has struggled to pass any meaningful reforms.

No American should lose property without being convicted of a crime. There will be no justice until Wyoming—and every state—abolishes civil forfeiture altogether.

Anya Bidwell

 Anya Bidwell is an IJ attorney.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Shining a light on police seizures, civil forfeitures

Shining a light on police seizures, civil forfeitures


Mississippi has some of the strongest protections in the country for private property rights. But those protections are shockingly lax when it comes to a little-known police practice called “civil forfeiture.”

Unlike criminal forfeiture, which only allows the government to forfeit property after securing a criminal conviction, under civil forfeiture, property owners do not have to be convicted or even criminally charged to lose their property.

Once a property has been forfeited and auctioned, law enforcement can keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds if just one agency investigated the case. If multiple agencies were involved, then agencies can retain all forfeiture proceeds. This creates a worrisome conflict of interest and may incentivize police to use this practice for their own financial gain.

Even worse, Mississippi police and prosecutors are not required to track or report their seizure and forfeiture activity, which keeps the public in the dark.

To shine a light on abuses of government power, state Rep. Chris Brown has proposed House Bill 1410, the “Asset Forfeiture Transparency Act.”  By a vote of 112 to 5, the House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill late last month.

If enacted, the bill would require agencies to list all property seized under state or federal forfeiture laws and include a description of the seized property and its estimated value. If a property is ultimately forfeited to the government, agencies would have to disclose the amount of proceeds received from its sale. Crucially, HB 1410 would oblige agencies to list whether or not property owners were even charged with a crime as well as how the case was resolved (i.e. in acquittal, conviction, dropped charges or plea agreement). Closed forfeiture cases would also appear on a public, searchable website created and maintained by the Commissioner of Public Safety.

The lack of transparency and accountability for Mississippi’s asset forfeiture laws can cause a breakdown of trust between police officers and the citizens whose rights they are sworn to serve and protect. The little information that has become public about civil forfeiture in Mississippi is troubling.

In Richland, a town of 7,000 residents just south of Jackson, police built and paid for a $4.1 million police station entirely with civil forfeiture. Forfeiture funds also paid for “every patrol car in the Richland Police Department fleet,” as well as a “top-level training center,” Mississippi Watchdog reported. Of course, without proper disclosure requirements, there is no way of knowing how many of those individuals who had their property taken in Richland were even charged with a crime.

The Washington Post investigated one federal forfeiture program and found that since 9/11, there have been nearly 400 cash seizures made by Mississippi agencies “without search warrants or indictments.” Although federal forfeiture data is largely wanting, the U.S. Department of Justice does keep track of how much an agency has collected through federal forfeiture, unlike current state law. Between 2000 and 2013, Mississippi law enforcement altogether received more than $47 million in forfeiture proceeds from the Justice Department, according to a recent report by the Institute for Justice.

By passing HB 1410, Mississippi is poised to join a growing reform movement.

Cops Now Take More Than Robbers

Cops Now Take More Than Robbers


One of the most troubling recent scenes from Sacramento came as the California state legislature reached the end of its session. A simple bill that would rein in abuses of the civil-asset forfeiture process—i.e., when police agencies take property from people, even if they’ve never been accused of a crime—came far short of passage after the law-enforcement lobby pulled out all the stops. The final vote was about money, not justice.

Police organizations argued they would lose a significant amount of funding if a law passed requiring that they secure a conviction before taking property. They often take homes, cars and cash from people after claiming the property was used in the commission of a crime. They need only prove the low standard of “probable cause.” (For instance, one Anaheim couple almost lost a $1.5 million commercial building after an undercover cop bought $37 in marijuana from a tenant, but the feds dropped that case after bad publicity.)

Created in the early days of the nation’s war on drugs, asset forfeiture was designed to grab the proceeds from drug kingpins. But most of the money now is grabbed from ordinary citizens. According to a study last year, about 80 percent of the time, seized property is taken from people who have never been charged with anything. That same study, by the Drug Policy Alliance, found wanton abuses in California cities. Police are not supposed to budget forfeiture proceeds, but they increasingly depend on the revenues to fund their operations.

The study also found “multiple instances of cash grabs by law enforcement being incentivized over deterring drug sales, wherein police wait until a drug sale concludes and then seize the cash proceeds of the sale rather than the drugs, as drugs must be destroyed and are of no monetary value to law enforcement.” It also found that some Los Angeles County cities “were found to be prioritizing asset forfeiture over general public safety concerns … .” In other words, police skew their policing strategies around these lucrative takings.

California’s law actually requires, in property seizures of more than $25,000, that the police agency gain a conviction and the legal standard requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. California law-enforcement agencies don’t like that higher standard, so they circumvent the state law. They participate in something called “equitable sharing”—i.e., they invite the feds into their operation, take the property using the lower federal standard, and then split the loot.

A new national study by the Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based civil-liberties group, gave California a “C+” in its civil-forfeiture laws. That leads to an obvious question: Given the terrible problems documented in California, how bad must things be in other states? Only seven states had better protections than California and the preponderance of states received “D” grades.

Arizona Takes Asset Forfeiture to a Despicable New Low

Arizona Takes Asset Forfeiture to a Despicable New Low


In The Law, Frederic Bastiat warned against what he termed “legal plunder” — the government forcibly taking one person’s property and giving it to another. It’s morally wrong and leads to the progressive destruction of civil society as more and more people and groups seek to live at the expense of others through the state.

One of the most odious modern examples is called civil asset forfeiture.

Under federal and state civil asset forfeiture laws, individuals can have their property (cash, vehicles, real estate, or anything else) confiscated by law enforcement officials merely on the allegation that the property was somehow involved with or obtained from criminal activity. The individual need not even be accused of any illegal conduct, much less convicted, in order for officials to seize the “guilty” property.

Once the property has been seized, it is up to the owner to battle through difficult legal obstacles to recover it. In such proceedings, the burden of proof is on the individual to show that the seizure was wrongful and that he’s entitled to have the property returned. Police and prosecutors love civil asset forfeiture because the proceeds actually go into their own budgets, and they are not inclined to cooperate with innocent victims of their confiscations.

To see how despicable this is, consider a recent case that arose in Pinal County, Arizona.

In April 2013, Rhonda Cox purchased a used pickup truck, which she titled and insured in her name. She often allowed her son Chris to use her truck, and one day in August 2013, he drove it to a store. Upon returning to the vehicle, Chris was confronted by Pinal County sheriff’s deputies who were investigating the theft of a tonneau cover (which goes over the back of a pickup truck) and a truck hood.

The deputies concluded that the cover and the hood on Cox’s truck were the stolen items and therefore put Chris under arrest. And, of course, they confiscated the truck under Arizona’s civil asset forfeiture statute.

Chris called his mother, and she rushed to the scene, where she found one deputy remaining, guarding her truck. She explained that the vehicle belonged to her and asked how she could get it back. The deputy smugly replied that she would never get it back. When Rhonda protested that she had nothing to do with the alleged crime, the deputy merely said, “Too bad.”

The sheriff’s department initiated seizure proceedings against the truck. Rhonda was unable to afford an attorney and attempted to fight it on her own. That was when she learned about Arizona’s intimidating law about attorneys’ fees in asset forfeiture cases.

In an email, deputy Craig Cameron told her that she was merely a “straw owner,” who had no standing to contest the seizure, that she had a duty to ensure that the vehicle was not used in any crime and, crucially, that “Under A.R.S. 13-4314(G) the State is due attorney fees from a party who does not prove they are entitled to an exception to forfeiture.”

Police seized his life savings without charging him for a crime. Now he’s fighting back.

Police seized his life savings without charging him for a crime. Now he’s fighting back.


Charles Clarke entered the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport last February eager to go back to his mother after a months-long visit with relatives. But instead of a quick, easy trip home to Orlando, Clarke lost his life savings — $11,000 in cash — to law enforcement officials who never even proved he committed a crime.

Clarke, a 24-year-old college student, said losing that $11,000 was “devastating.” He’s been forced to live with his mom, trumping his plans to move closer to school. He’s fallen back on other family for financial support. And he had to take out loans for school instead of paying for it up front — for which he’s still in debt. “It’s been a struggle for me,” Clarke, who’s now fighting in court to get his money back, said.

But law enforcement officials may have been working within the confines of the law when they took Clarke’s money. Under federal and state laws that allow what’s called “civil forfeiture,” law enforcement officers can seize someone’s property without proving the person was guilty of a crime; they just need probable cause to believe the assets are being used as part of criminal activity, typically drug trafficking. Police can then absorb the value of this property — be it cash, cars, guns, or something else — as profit: either through state programs, or under a federal program known as Equitable Sharing that lets local and state police get up to 80 percent of the value of what they seize as money for their departments.

So police can not only seize people’s property without proving involvement in a crime, but they have a financial incentive to do so.

It’s these laws that law enforcement officials cited in taking Clarke’s cash, and in seizing thousands of other people’s property across the country.

How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without ever charging him with a crime

How the DEA took a young man’s life savings without ever charging him with a crime

Joseph Rivers was hoping to hit it big. According to the Albuquerque Journal, the aspiring businessman from just outside of Detroit had pulled together $16,000 in seed money to fulfill a lifetime dream of starting a music video company. Last month, Rivers took the first step in that voyage, saying goodbye to the family and friends who had supported him at home and boarding an Amtrak train headed for Los Angeles.

He never made it. From the Albuquerque Journal:

A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why. When Rivers replied that he was headed to LA to make a music video, the agent asked to search his bags. Rivers complied.

The agent found Rivers’s cash, still in a bank envelope. He explained why he had it: He was starting a business in California, and he’d had trouble in the past withdrawing large sums of money from out-of-state banks.

The agents didn’t believe him, according to the article. They said they thought the money was involved in some sort of drug activity. Rivers let them call his mother back home to corroborate the story. They didn’t believe her, either.

The agents found nothing in Rivers’s belongings that indicated that he was involved with the drug trade: no drugs, no guns. They didn’t arrest him or charge him with a crime. But they took his cash anyway, every last cent, under the authority of the Justice Department’s civil asset forfeiture program.

Rivers’s life savings represent just a drop in the Justice Department’s multibillion-dollar civil asset forfeiture bucket. Rivers has retained a lawyer in the hope of getting at least some of his money back. Rivers says he suspects he may have been singled out for a search because he was the only black person on that part of the train.

There is no presumption of innocence under civil asset forfeiture laws. Rather, law enforcement officers only need to have a suspicion — in practice, often a vague one — that a person is involved with illegal activity in order to seize their property. On the highway, for instance, police may cite things like tinted windows, air fresheners or trash in the car, according to a Washington Post investigation last year.

The DEA declined to comment in detail to the Albuquerque Journal’s Joline Guierrez Krueger, though it did say that Rivers was not targeted because of his race. The Albuquerque DEA office did not immediately respond to a request by The Washington Post for more information about the case.

Once property has been seized, the burden of proof falls on the defendant to get it back — even if the cops ultimately never charge them with a crime. “We don’t have to prove that the person is guilty,” an Albuquerque DEA agent told the Journal. “It’s that the money is presumed to be guilty.”

The practice has proven to be controversial. Earlier this year, then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced measures restricting the use of some types of civil asset forfeiture. But as the Institute for Justice noted in a February report, these changes only affect a small percentage of forfeitures initiated by local law enforcement agencies, not federal ones like the DEA. About 90 percent of Justice Department seizures won’t be affected at all.

Asset forfeiture is lucrative for the DEA. According to their latest notification of seized goods, updated Monday, agents have seized well over $38 million dollars’ worth of cash and goods from people in the first few months of this year. Some of the goods may be directly related to ongoing criminal investigations, but most of them are not.

Veteran Loses Over $60,000 To Police, Despite Lack Of Criminal Charges

Veteran Loses Over $60,000 To Police, Despite Lack Of Criminal Charges


Mark Brewer is a decorated Air Force veteran who fought in the global war on terror. But last month, he became a casualty in the drug war.

In late March, the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the federal government could take more than $60,000 of Brewer’s cash with civil forfeiture, even though he was never charged with a crime. The decision lets many Midwestern states continue to take property from people who have done nothing wrong.

A former military police officer and weapons specialist, Brewer earned several medals during his service in the Air Force, before he was medically discharged in 2008. Brewer said he developed Posttraumatic Stress Disorder after a deployment in Afghanistan.

In November 2011, Brewer was driving on Interstate 80 in Nebraska, when Douglas County Sheriff’s Deputy Dave Wintle pulled Brewer over for crossing traffic lanes without signaling. During the stop, Wintle performed a criminal background check, which “revealed no major violations.”

After gaining Brewer’s consent, Wintle walked around the car with a canine unit; the dog alerted to the trunk. When he searched the trunk, Wintle found two backpacks that had a “strong odor of raw marijuana” and $63,530 in cash.

Brewer said he was travelling to Los Angles to visit his uncle and planned to use the money as a down payment for a house. According to Brewer, he had been saving that cash during his military service and from disability payments. Wintle did not believe his story, so Brewer’s cash was seized and his car was towed.

Man Acquitted of Crime, Cops Still Take His Cash

Man Acquitted of Crime, Cops Still Take His Cash


Iowa State troopers can keep more than $30,000 in cash taken during a traffic stop, even though the owner was found not guilty, the Iowa Court of Appeals ruled last week.

In June 2012, Robert Pardee was riding in a car through Powesheik County, Iowa on I-80, when an Iowa State trooper pulled the driver over for a non-working taillight and tailgating. During the stop, state troopers found “a small amount of marijuana” and $33,100 in cash. Pardee was arrested and charged with possessing cannabis. In Iowa, first-time offenders can face up to six months in jail and/or $1,000 in fines.

One year later, a district court found him not guilty. As the criminal case proceeded against Pardee, the state also filed a civil forfeiture case against his seized cash. Despite his acquittal, first the district court and then the Iowa Court of Appeals ordered Pardee to forfeit his cash to the state.

Unlike criminal forfeiture, which does require a conviction to take the ill-gotten gains from criminals, civil forfeiture lets law enforcement seize and keep property from people without a criminal conviction, or even without filing charges.