Pubdate: Sat, 22 Feb 2014
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Ian Mulgrew
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/af.htm (Asset Forfeiture)

USE FULL NAME, COURT DECIDES

B. C.' s highest bench has rejected a plea from the director of civil 
forfeiture to intervene in a lower court's handling of evidence 
obtained through police misconduct.

In a unanimous ruling Friday, the Court of Appeal said great 
deference must be given trial judges and their discretion to control 
their proceedings.

The appeal panel sent the case, involving an attempt to seize a 
Mission home, back to the B. C. Supreme Court for decision.

Justice Mary Saunders, who read the 25- minute decision, rebuked the 
office of civil forfeiture, whose current director is Phil Tawtel, 
for appeal documents that referred to litigant David Lloydsmith only 
by his surname.

Saunders told the civil forfeiture office's lawyers to tell their 
client: "I respectfully suggest that pleadings should be drawn from a 
perspective of formal respect."

This is "a new area of litigation," she noted, and that this is "one 
of several, perhaps more than several" cases moving through the 
Supreme Court involving someone who has not been convicted and some 
have not even been charged with a crime.

David Lloydsmith was accused in 2007, but never convicted, of growing 
marijuana. In 2011, the RCMP sent the file to the civil forfeiture 
office. Lloydsmith said he was growing some pot but not commercially.

At the beginning of the forfeiture case, the Supreme Court judge 
concluded Mounties violated Lloydsmith's rights, starting when they 
barged into the home without a search warrant.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom