Pubdate: Mon, 30 Jun 2014
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
Copyright: 2014 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc
Contact:  http://www.philly.com/inquirer/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/340
Author: Chris Mondics
Page: A3
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/af.htm (Asset Forfeiture)

REVISITING CIVIL FORFEITURE

A Woman Who Lost Her Home Appeals, Saying She's Punished for Son's
Crime.

At once tidy and stalwart, but pockmarked, too, with its share of
boarded-up homes, Elizabeth Young's neighborhood in the Cobbs Creek
section of West Philadelphia is the epitome of urban grit.

No one would mistake this tough patch of the city for a hotbed of real
estate action. And yet the District Attorney's Office stands to make a
pretty good return here.

On April 3, 2013, Common Pleas Court Judge Paula Patrick ruled in
favor of the D.A.'s Office and ordered Young, 69, a widow active in
her church, to turn over her home to the city. The city had arrested
her son and another man for the sale of small amounts of marijuana
there, and then, under civil forfeiture statutes, moved to seize
Young's home.

They were able to do this even though Young had never been accused of
a crime, much less convicted. The loss of the home is no small thing,
say her lawyers. She has been forced to stay with relatives. The house
was appraised at $54,000, and it was her main asset.

That and her 1997 Chevrolet Venture minivan. The D.A.'s Office took
that, too.

Young's case is now on appeal before Commonwealth Court. A three-judge
panel originally heard the case in October, but in a sign of how
seriously the court views the constitutional issues implicated by the
seizure, a majority of its 11 justices decided to rehear the matter in
May. It is expected to rule any day now on whether the seizure
violated Young's constitutional protection against excessive fines
under the Eighth Amendment.

Young's lawyers at the firm of Ballard Spahr, Jessica Anthony and
Jason Leckerman, have no quarrel with the city's aggressive posture
toward drug dealing. They say the concern is that in his zeal to push
back against drug dealers, District Attorney Seth Williams is
subjecting people to exceedingly harsh punishment for crimes that
someone else committed.

In fact, under the law, there doesn't even have to be an underlying
conviction for a civil forfeiture action to proceed.

"Civil forfeiture punishes property owners for someone else's wrongs,"
said Anthony. "That means individuals can lose their homes because a
family member, friend, or even a stranger has been accused of using,
storing or selling drugs in their home, even if no one gets convicted
for the crime. The loss of one's home ... is a harsh
punishment."

Williams did not respond to requests to be interviewed for this
column. But his spokeswoman, Tasha Jamerson, said civil forfeitures
are an important tool in the fight against drug trafficking. Overall,
the city seized 20 homes in 2013; it forced the sale of eight more,
splitting the proceeds with the homeowner. The targets of such actions
are given multiple opportunities to end the illegal activities, and
the D.A.'s Office only moves to seize properties after repeated
efforts to persuade the homeowner, Jamerson said.

According to the D.A.'s court filings, Young was told by the police
about her son's marijuana dealing, but failed to stop him. Moreover,
once the D.A.'s Office moved to seize the property, on the 400 block
of South 62d Street, it offered to settle.

"Although the claimant [Young] was not charged, she was not an
innocent owner," the D.A.'s Office said in an appeals brief. "The
trial court found that she should have known about the illegal drug
sales and tacitly consented to them."

Anthony said the settlement terms, along with the seizure process,
were manifestly unfair. In civil forfeiture, unlike in criminal cases,
the burden of establishing innocence is on the accused. Moreover,
Young claims not to have known about her son's drug-dealing
activities, and once she was told by the police, did not believe them.
Since she never was charged with a crime, much less convicted, she
disputes as a baseline principle that Williams has the right to take
her house. Her son, Donald Graham, pleaded guilty to possession and
sale of marijuana and was sentenced to 11 to 23 months of house arrest.

Another man was accused of selling marijuana at the house, where
slightly over a pound of marijuana was found during a search, but the
Ballard lawyers say the case is tainted because one of the officers
involved in the arrest has pleaded guilty himself to charges stemming
from a scheme to plant drugs on a suspected dealer.

The D.A.'s Office may have a point that Young had knowledge. During
one search of the home, police found a scale, plastic bags, and a
small amount of marijuana in the dining room. If these facts are true,
it strains the imagination to conceive how the drug activity escaped
Young's notice. But Anthony, noting that Young had been in and out of
the hospital at the time, says that is not the point. Knowledge of a
crime is not necessarily a crime. Even if Young knew about the drug
activities, which she disputes, she is being punished as if she were a
willing participant.

The litigation over Young's unoccupied house and car is not happening
in a vacuum. All across America, such civil forfeiture actions, born
of politicians' and law enforcement's urgent focus on drug
trafficking, have triggered pushback as people with no criminal
convictions have had their properties seized.

Young is lucky in that she has lawyers from a prominent firm
representing her pro bono. But the targets of seizure actions most
often are people of modest incomes who don't have access to good legal
advice, said Louis Rulli, a professor at the University of
Pennsylvania Law School, and a nationally recognized expert on civil
forfeiture.

Rulli says the concern, beyond the potential breaching of
constitutional rights, is that the forfeitures can create a perverse
incentive for law enforcement to target people simply to get hold of
their assets.

"The fact is we are in tough financial times and forfeiture is raising
millions," Rulli said. "What we see is the use of civil forfeiture
against innocent individuals who own property."
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