SPN 27th Annual Meeting

Nationwide, state legislators are increasingly becoming aware of the serious abuses of civil forfeiture—where police seize, and prosecutors litigate the transfer of titles to people’s property without convicting or even charging them of any criminal wrongdoing.  Just as troubling, they often keep the proceeds to fund their own departments, thus giving them a direct financial incentive to abuse this power.  

In 2015 and 2016, New Mexico, Nebraska, and other states enacted effective reforms to protect citizens in their states. But prosecutors are pushing back. Instead of opposing reform bills, prosecutors are undermining reform efforts by offering watered-down legislation. These “compromise” bills are based on earlier and ineffective reforms that (a) simply put a criminal conviction in front of an existing civil forfeiture process or (b) include numerous exceptions to the conviction prerequisite. They gain traction because of the enormous complexity of seizures and forfeitures and some legislators’ deference to law enforcement.

This panel will discuss the details of the forfeiture process and how some prosecutors may have become too friendly to be trusted.