Pubdate: Sat, 16 Sep 2000 Source: Lincoln Journal Star (NE) Copyright: 2000 Lincoln Journal Star Contact: PO Box 81609, Lincoln, NE 68508 Fax: (402) 473-7291 Feedback: http://www.journalstar.com:80/info/about_ljs/letform Website: http://www.journalstar.com/ GIVE HERRERA'S MONEY BACK It sounds downright un-American, but the federal Drug Enforcement Administration says Hector Herrera has to prove $4,000 the agents seized at Omaha Eppley Airfield is not drug money before they will give him his money back. The burden of proof is on Herrera. That's the law, the federal drug seizure law. Um, er, well, that was the law until Aug. 23. Then it changed. Now the federal government bears the burden of proving seized money was earned in illegal drug transactions. Federal agents seized the $4,000 from Herrera in June after they saw him use cash to buy an airline ticket for a vacation in Phoenix. Drug-sniffing dogs were used to search him. No drugs were found. No charges were filed. But the dog smelled drugs on the bills in Herrera's pocket. On the basis of that agents took his cash. Herrera insists that he earned the money delivering pizza and flowers and working for a drywall company. He says he has the pay stubs to prove it. Two months later he is still waiting for his $4,000. The American Civil Liberties Union has stepped into the case on Herrera's behalf. Tim Butz, director of ACLU'S Nebraska office, says the case involves issues of racial profiling and unlawful seizure. By now the DEA ought to know there is a big problem with relying on drug-sniffing dogs to prove that cash is drug-related. Most of the cash in America is tainted with drugs. Thomas Jourdan, chief of materials and devices for the FBI, says 85 to 90 percent of the bills in the United States are covered with measurable amounts of cocaine. "Any time you take a bunch of money and let a dog sniff it, he will find cocaine on it," said Terry Hall, laboratory director for Toxicology Testing Service in Miami, who has testified in more than 500 drug cases, usually for the prosecution. "It doesn't mean you're a drug smuggler. It just means you have a lot of money in one place." Judge C Arlen Beam, a former Nebraskan who was appointed a federal judge by Ronald Reagan in 1987, wrote the decision for a 1996 case in which $77,000 was returned after it was seized from a man at the St. Louis airport. "The fact of contamination alone is virtually meaningless and gives no hint of when or how the cash became so contaminated." Beam went on to describe the case as a cautionary tale, "illustrating the mischief to which our eagerness to employ forfeitures as a weapon in the war against drugs can lead." How many cautionary tales does the DEA need? If the agency has any sense of fairness and justice it will stop living in the past. Even though the DEA technically can apply the old law, it ought to live by the new law. If the DEA can't prove the money was drug-related it should give Herrera's money back. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart