The government can take away your assets, even if you have been charged with a crime. Tucson handyman Kevin McBride knows this very well.
McBride’s friend took her Jeep to buy soft drinks and gas. When she didn’t come back quickly, McBride got involved and went out looking for her. She went to the convenience store and discovered that she had been arrested for promoting $25 marijuana and that her Jeep was being towed. McBride’s friend was eventually released without charge, but police told McBride that she would keep the Jeep, auction it and spend the proceeds on the police budget.
McBride did nothing wrong, but his Jeep is gone, the car he wants to work. In addition, his equipment was in the confiscated car and, the police returned many, eventually he stayed with some.
It sounds like a nightmare, but it’s a real story. And similar incidents occur every day in Arizona and across the country, thanks to a formula called civil forfeiture. Through civil confiscation, the police can take, retain and enjoy their assets without even accusing him of a crime, let alone convict him of a crime. And as McBride’s plight shows, they can do it even if you didn’t know that their assets were being used in a supposedly illegal way.
However, it is true that you are allowed to go to court to verify your assets or prove your innocence. But unlike criminal cases, you are not provided with any lawyers. You’ll want to hire one yourself, at a cost of several thousand dollars. And unlike criminal cases, it will be up to you to prove your innocence: the approved government doesn’t have to turn out to be guilty of you.
How can he? Like many laws, civil confiscation was designed to solve a challenge and came to be used in a way that its creators had never imagined. It began as a way to punish criminals who were not successful in the law, either because they were outside the jurisdiction of the government (as pirates) or because they were part of a vast criminal business (think of drug lords). . It was never designed to be used to take the Jeep from someone like McBride. But the legislation is poorly drafted, and the other people who can use that legislation to their merit are smart, so the use of the legislation extends to where we are today, with a device for the confiscation of billions of dollars nationwide.
That’s why this week McBride informed the government that if he proceeded with the seizure and brought him to justice, he would challenge not only his Jeep, but also to declare Arizona’s civil forfeiture program unconstitutional. The government deserves not to be allowed to take credit for its assets because someone else would have used it in a crime. And he doesn’t deserve not being able to use a formula designed to target drug lords to target a handyman. If McBride succeeds, it will be a victory for all Arizonans.
The Arizona Legislature can also assist Arizona landowners by amending the state’s civil forfeiture legislation to demand a conviction for criminals and the burden of evidence about the government in no-fault home cases than on others like McBride, who have only lent their Jeep to their girlfriend.
But whatever the means to reform or repeal these laws, we will have to deal with them: Arizonans deserve their personal property to be protected from civil confiscation, and we will have to put an end to this abusive practice. A convenience store should not charge anyone for your car and livelihood.
Matt Miller is a senior suggestive at the Goldwater Institute.
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