Pubdate: Sun, 05 May 2013
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA)
Copyright: 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Contact:  http://www.ajc.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28
Author: Willoughby Mariano

SEIZURE PROCESS HAS SAFEGUARDS, DA SAYS

But Forfeiture Law Can Have Lasting Impact on Innocent Owners. 
Sometimes Police Have Right to Take Even More.

Agencies that make seizures say they work hard to be fair. They even 
return money and cars that state law allows them to keep.

"It doesn't mean that because you can forfeit something, that you 
have to do it," Cobb District Attorney Vic Reynolds said.

In practice, though, what a prosecutor considers "lenient" can amount 
to unjust punishment in the eyes of an owner.

In 2011, Tiffany Abbott Holschbach's boyfriend, Corey Brown, was 
supposed to walk to the store with their child to purchase money 
orders for rent and bills, she said. Instead, Brown got into her 
rental car with the child and a second man. Between them, the men had 
more than 100 grams of marijuana, according to a police report.

The next time Abbott-Holschbach saw Brown, he was face down on the 
ground and in handcuffs. Cobb County police seized $1,959 he had in 
cash. They said they both told officers at the scene that they had 
her money, but police decided to take all of it. "I didn't even know 
that I had the right to fight for my money back," Abbot-Holschbach said.

With free help from a sympathetic attorney, Abbott-Holschbach used a 
piece of lined notebook paper to write a filing that asked the court 
to give back the money.

She included check stubs that showed she made enough money to have 
made at least a portion of that money from her customer service job.

The district attorney's office countered that the second man at the 
scene had claimed that $1,000 of the cash came from a drug deal.

Cobb police had the right to keep the entire sum because her 
hand-written filing was not notarized, prosecutors said. They decided 
to return a portion, they said, to help her family.

Abbott-Holschbach received $600 of the $1,959. It was too late. She 
and her two children were evicted from their home, and her car was 
repossessed. Brown was found guilty. "I completely agree with him 
going to jail. But I had to pay for what he did," she said.

Reynolds, who was not head of the office at the time, said officers 
could not have returned the cash immediately. It's too easy to make 
the wrong call at a chaotic crime scene.

The civil process protects everyone involved, he said. "In a general 
sense, I think the statute is fair, if officers are doing it 
properly, agencies are doing it properly, and there are safeguards," 
Reynolds said. 
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom