Wednesday, August 14, 2013

A-Rod, Forfeiture and a Due Process Attack on Financial Incentives for Overzealous Law Enforcement

By Mike Dorf

My latest Verdict column uses the A-Rod saga as an occasion for considering the circumstances under which a judge orders a party to do something--go to prison based on a criminal conviction; pay money damages; or comply with an injunction--but then suspends judgment pending appeal.  I explain the relevant considerations and then go on to note that A-Rod's ability to continue to play baseball while his appeal of his suspension is pending makes a great deal of sense in light of the fact that he has not yet had his day in court (or rather, his day in arbitration, as authorized by the relevant policy agreement between Major League Baseball and the players' union).

Here I want to say a few words about the opposite situation: contexts in which the law authorizes the taking away of something valuable before a finding of liability.  The law allows for this possibility in various ostensibly extraordinary circumstances: In civil cases, courts grant preliminary injunctions without a full showing of liability and even grant temporary restraining orders based on ex parte proceedings; in criminal cases, pre-trial detention without bail (or with bail set too high for the defendant to pay) has a similar effect.

In each of the foregoing circumstances, however, there is supposed to be a strong showing that the preliminary relief is warranted.  Contrast the law of civil forfeiture, under which a relatively weak showing permits the government to seize property associated with crime.  In a very disturbing story in the New Yorker, Sarah Stillman shows how one small town in Texas and countless other jurisdictions have been abusing the forfeiture power, essentially shaking down travelers and others.  In the leading set of cases Stillman explores, the program began as an apparently legitimate effort to target drug dealers but quickly devolved into a corrupt effort to relieve innocents of their money.  The low legal threshold for initial forfeitures, the baroque system of laws that make it difficult for an innocent to recover his or her property, and the decline in other sources of revenue, have combined to make forfeiture abuse too tempting for many local governments (and state governments and the federal government) to resist.

Can anything be done?  As Stillman's article illustrates, in the most egregious case, a class action lawsuit succeeded in generating outrage and reform.  But that was just one Texas town, and the problem remains widespread.  Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has generally upheld forfeiture schemes against pure due process challenges.

Nonetheless, the Stillman article suggests at least one avenue of attack.  She writes:
States that place seized funds in a neutral account, like Maine, Missouri (where proceeds go to a public education fund), North Dakota, and Vermont, have generally avoided major forfeiture-abuse scandals. Problems seem to arise in states—such as Texas, Georgia, and Virginia—with few restrictions on how police can use the proceeds. Scandals, too, emerge from the federal Equitable Sharing program, which allows local police to skirt state restrictions on the use of funds.
In other words--and unsurprisingly--problems arise when the people seizing the money and goods get to keep a substantial portion of the money and goods.  But that's not only unsurprising.  It should be unconstitutional.  Consider two cases.  In Young v. U.S. ex rel Vuitton,  the Court allowed for private prosecution of criminal contempt actions, but disallowed such prosecutions where the private prosecutor stood to gain financially from a conviction.  Likewise, in Connally v. Georgia, the Supreme Court held that a magistrate who is paid when he approves warrant applications but not when he rejects them is not a neutral magistrate as required by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Should these precedents apply to police who get cars, boats and cash from forfeitures?  Connally and the line of cases leading up to it are arguably distinguishable because a magistrate, like a judge, must be neutral, whereas we expect police to be "biased" against criminal suspects.  But Vuitton undercuts that distinction, because prosecutors are supposed to have the same bias.  The case stands for--or at least should stand for--the proposition that adding financial incentives to law enforcement's existing bias towards zealous enforcement goes too far.

Will the Supreme Court buy it?  I don't know, but so far as I have been able to ascertain, the Justices have not yet considered this line of argument--and it ought to have at least some appeal to conservatives no less than to liberals.

5 comments:

Hashim said...

It seems to me that Vuitton and Connally should be distinguished on the ground that the relevant govt actor in those cases was profiting in his *private* capacity from his official acts. That private bias in the performance of official conduct is what was constitutionally troubling.

By contrast, the Govt *as a whole* necessarily profits in its sovereign capacity from bringing forfeiture actions, yet that by itself can't render forfeiture actions unconstitutional. So your point has to be that the particular sub-division of Govt that is bringing the action is also the sub-division that is receiving the sovereign benefit. But it's hard to see why that internal govt accounting should be of constitutional magnitude, especially since money is fungible. At the end of the day, the govt sub-division bringing the action always knows that forfeiture actions will benefit the govt as a whole, and that some or all of those benefits will trickle down to the sub-division either directly or indirectly.

Michael C. Dorf said...

Hash: I think you're right that at some point the connection becomes too attenuated, but at least some of these forfeiture provisions seem to me on the "personal" side of the line. A useful analogy may be the Supreme Court's decision in West Lynn Creamery v. Lynn, http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-141.ZS.html , where the Court distinguished tax revenues from out-of-staters that went directly to in-state competitors (invalid under the dormant CC) from tax revenues that went to the general Treasury, from where they COULD end up benefiting in-state competitors but would not necessarily end up there (valid).

T Jones said...

Mike, I'd like to see your further thoughts on the idea that police and prosecutors are supposed to be "biased" against criminal suspects. I think I see what you mean, but also I think that policy as often understood on the ground leads to real problems (e.g., the first Rodney King verdict, and many prosecutors' fights to keep convicted persons later "proved" innocent by DNA evidence in prison nonetheless).
Law enforcement officials need to be biased against criminals, but because criminal suspects is a much larger class which includes some non-criminals, practical limits seem necessary.

Unknown said...

桃園徵信公司
雲林徵信公司
徵信社公會
徵信社尋人
徵信社工作
商業間諜
抓姦委託調查
外遇徵信社
結婚週年
第三者背景
夫妻
外遇抓姦
澎湖徵信社
豪門婚姻
貴婦
養男人
大陸徵信社
夫妻財產
澳門徵信社
淫婦
婚變
北京徵信
外遇二奶
北京徵信社
婚姻暴力
徵信達人狗仔網

Unknown said...

新女性徵信
外遇調查站
鴻海徵信
亞洲徵信
非凡徵信社
鳳凰徵信社
中華新女性徵信社
全國新女性徵信社
全省女人徵信有限公司
私家偵探超優網
女人感情會館-婚姻感情挽回徵信
女子偵探徵信網
女子國際徵信
外遇抓姦偵探社
女子徵信社
女人國際徵信
女子徵信社
台中縣徵信商業同業公會
成功科技器材
女人國際徵信社
女人國際徵信
三立徵信社-外遇
女人國際徵信
女人國際徵信
大同女人徵信聯盟
晚晴徵信