During a hearing focused on reforming the Department of Justice’s civil asset forfeiture regime, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) claimed he had heard from whistleblowers within the US Marshals Service that the agency is abusing confiscated funds.
“US Marshals Service is spending asset forfeiture money on lavish office furnishings and facilities, like a $22,000 conference table and a $1.8 million training facility that lies unused nearly eleven months of the year,” Sen. Grassley said.
He added that the whistleblowers told him “resources have been used selectively to reward friends of senior management with agency jobs and lucrative contracting positions.”
“This kind of cavalier spending is out of control,” he charged.
Civil asset forfeiture laws allow local and federal police to seize property of individuals—cash, vehicles, and real estate, for example—that officers believe was involved in illegal activity. Often those confiscated assets are used by law enforcement departments to fund their operations.
A Washington Post study of Department of Justice records published last September found that there have been nearly 62,000 cash seizures along highways and other areas by state and federal police since 2001. The seizures raked in more than $2.5 billion. The majority, $1.7 billion, was funneled back into state and local police departments.
The Post also found that more than 400 departments and task forces around the nation fill 20 percent or more of their annual budgets with seized assets, despite a federal law that bans forfeited money from being used to finance officers’ salaries deficit spending.
This dynamic has led to “allegations of policing for profit,” noted the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.)
He also said that the framework governing asset seizures “is in need of significant oversight and improvements along the way.”
Currently, individuals suspected of crimes can have their property taken without ever even being arrested.
Responding to pressure to reform the civil asset forfeiture program, Attorney General Eric Holder announced in January changes at the federal level that prevent agencies from taking property seized by state or local law enforcement.
Presidential hopeful Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) testified at the hearing pushing his own reform package—the Act. Paul said his bill would prevent police departments from directly benefitting off seized assets, raise the burden before property is seized, and ensure that individuals who do have money confiscated have fair representation and recourse to appeal.
He argued that “these laws were originally intended to disrupt criminal networks. But they have increasingly been used against innocent citizens to strip them of their property without a lawyer to defend their rights, without a day in court to hear the charges against them, and without the due process of law.”
There were senators at the hearing who objected to the idea of cutting off the spigot. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) called reform efforts “unthinkable.” He threw out a dubious statistic claiming that in 95% of cases, the assets seized by police is “dope money.”
“You’re not taking somebody’s liberty,” Sessions argued, remarking that it takes a mere complaint to recover improperly seized property.
Darpana Sheth, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, who also testified at the hearing, informed Sen. Sessions that it really isn’t that easy to recoup funds.
“You don’t have a right to counsel,” she told lawmakers, adding that “often the property is worth less than the amount of legal fees. “
According to the Washington Post, only a sixth of seizures are actually challenged precisely because of the cost of obtaining counsel. Of those litigants, 41 percent were successful.
Sheth noted that arbitrary dates and deadlines, which are often easy to miss without legal representation, further hinder individuals’ attempts to recoup confiscated assets.
Sessions had no sympathy. “You miss the deadline, and you’re out,” he said.
His colleague on the committee, however, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) was more understanding. He said that even if Session’s was correct that 95% of seized assets are “dope money,” lawmakers should still be “concerned about the other 5%.”
“We need to make sure that their rights are protected. Sometime I think they get swept up into this and go through a process they shouldn’t have to go through in order to get their lawful property back,” he commented.
