Judges and Judiciary
Sep. 21, 2016
Reining in civil asset forfeiture
SB 443 will help ensure that private property is not taken based on a hunch, bias, malice, or inadequate or inadmissible evidence. It is designed to bolster the fundamental fairness of the asset forfeiture system, a goal to which all sides of this debate should aspire.
David B. Smith
David is an Alexandria, Virginia, attorney with a national forfeiture practice. He is the author of the leading treatise on asset forfeiture, "Prosecution and Defense of Forfeiture Cases" (Matthew Bender 2017).
The civil asset forfeiture system - where police agencies, cloaked in the authority of the state, can enrich their own departments with property taken from private citizens - is an area of the law that has attracted increasing national scrutiny from reformers of all political stripes. If it is to be an ethical and effective tool of criminal justice, this system, where conflicts of interest are ever-present and the dangers of corruption loom ominously, demands the strictest of safeguards fo...
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