Pubdate: Sat, 08 Aug 2015
Source: Albuquerque Journal (NM)
Copyright: 2015 Albuquerque Journal
Contact:  http://www.abqjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/10
Author: Joline Gutierrez Krueger

CASH SEIZURE CASE: UNITED STATES V. $16K

So many good things have happened to Joseph Rivers lately that it's 
easy to forget that the good came from a bad experience in 
Albuquerque four months ago when Drug Enforcement Administration 
agents took his $16,000 and thus his dream without benefit of arrest 
or criminal charge.

Which is not to say that the bad is completely over - because it isn't.

Rivers, you may recall, is the young man from the Detroit suburbs who 
was headed west to Los Angeles to seek his fortune as a rapper and 
music video producer when the Amtrak train he was traveling in made a 
stop April 15 in Albuquerque and his $16,000 in cash, stored in an 
envelope in a blue suitcase, was seized by DEA agents who had a hunch 
- - but no search warrant, charging document or probable cause - that 
the cash was connected with criminal activity.

Rivers was also the only black person in his section of the train.

His story, first told in this column May 6, went viral, retold again 
and again by both social and national media, including the Wall 
Street Journal, Huffington Post, The Atlantic, the Washington Post 
and the Daily Mail in London.

He was invited to make appearances on TV shows like "The Security 
Brief," filmed in New York City, and to testify before a briefing 
held by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Drug Policy 
Alliance in Washington. D.C.

Several members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, including Rep. 
Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, asked for an explanation from 
the DEA on Rivers' case and contemplated whether it was time to 
change the law that allowed such a thing to happen.

Almost overnight, Rivers, 22, became the poster boy of what is wrong 
about civil asset forfeiture, a troubling tool used more than you 
might realize by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to 
confiscate money and property from citizens based on a feeling, an 
inkling that the items are connected to illegal activity such as 
narcotics trafficking.

The citizen need never be arrested or charged in connection with the 
forfeiture - and, indeed, Rivers hasn't been.

As Albuquerque DEA head agent Sean Waite so curiously put it in my 
previous column: "We don't have to prove that the person is guilty. 
It's that the money is presumed to be guilty."

Rivers, too, has benefited personally. Donors chipped in more than 
$7,000 to a Go Fund Me account. With about $3,000 of those funds, he 
finally made it to Los Angeles in June - this time with no DEA 
interference - and made that music video of his song "Do They Know" 
under his rap name, Joe Kush.

His plight also caught the attention of executives with Atlantic 
Records, a major music label, who offered him a chance to cut a demo 
of his music at its New York studios.

"My dreams are coming to reality faster than I ever could have 
imagined," Rivers gushed. And now for the bad. At the time, DEA 
officials would not explain why they had taken the cash but said that 
generally they look for "indicators" such as whether the person 
bought a one-way ticket with cash, is traveling from or to a city 
known as a hot spot for drug activity, if the person's story has 
inconsistencies or if the large sums of money found could have been 
transported by more conventional means.

Now, federal officials say most of those indicators pertain to 
Rivers. In a federal complaint for forfeiture filed July 29, the U.S. 
Attorney's Office in New Mexico paints a troubling picture of a young 
man convicted in 2010 (as a juvenile), 2011 and 2014 of marijuana and 
weapons possession.

The complaint also says that DEA agents in Albuquerque that day had 
noted a smell of marijuana from Rivers' suitcase and that a 
drug-sniffing dog later "alerted" positively for the odor of an 
illegal controlled substance on Rivers' money - this, though no 
illicit substance was ever found on Rivers or in the suitcase.

Agents also later said they found numerous text messages on Rivers' 
cellphone referring to "kush," which they say is slang for high-grade 
marijuana. But remember: Joe Kush is Rivers' rap name.

Michael Pancer, a San Diego attorney representing Rivers, blamed the 
previous charges on youthful indiscretion and claimed it has no 
bearing on who Rivers is now or what he was doing on that ill-fated April trip.

"He did have problems in the past, but none of those relate to the 
funds he had with him," Pancer said. "We are going to be able to 
account for all those funds from legitimate sources."

Rivers adds: "I served my time and got my life back together. These 
charges exist, but there is an entire story behind them as well. Why 
does my past matter anyway?"

What is important to remember is that the feds have not accused 
Rivers of wrongdoing but contend his money is guilty of wrongdoing 
because of Rivers' past. And so the case goes to court. The name of 
the case, incidentally, is the United States of America v. $16,000 in 
United States Currency.
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