IOWA FORFEITURE LAW NEEDS FIXING

It's perfectly legal in Iowa for police to seize money and property
suspected of being used in criminal drug activity. The assets can be kept
by police and county attorney's offices for crime-fighting purposes if a
forfeiture judgment is awarded in civil court. However, forfeiture rulings
don't require a conviction in criminal court.

Unfair? Many people think so.

And that's troubling, given that our nation's legal system is founded on
the basic principle of "innocent until proven guilty." In Scott County, law
enforcement agencies handled 412 forfeiture cases from January 1996 to
November 2000, seizing and retaining assets worth more than $760,000.
One-fourth of those cases involved no criminal charges and accounted for
about $135,000 of the forfeiture total, according to a Quad-City Times
investigative series that begins with today's edition.

Understanding the difference between the civil and criminal justice systems
is important to this issue because it involves individual rights to property.

In criminal court, cases must be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt" for
conviction.

In civil court, the standard is lower. Judgments require only "a
preponderance of the evidence" -- that is, there simply must be more
evidence than not indicating that, in the case of drug deals, property was
used in commission of an alleged crime.

Scott County prosecutors defend the system, saying it allows them to remove
the profits of drug dealing in cases that could be difficult or impossible
to prove criminal charges.

And they say an "invisible wall" is maintained between prosecutors of
criminal drug cases and the attorney who handles civil forfeiture cases.
The separate process is designed to prevent assets from being used by
suspects to "buy" their way out of criminal charges. Yet authorities can
take away the profits of small dealers and cut deals with suspects who can
avoid criminal prosecution by agreeing to assist investigation of larger
drug cases.

We support the ability of police agencies and prosecutors to use drug-case
forfeitures for funding additional training and equipment. We expect police
to put up a strong fight in the drug war. We also expect suspects to be
considered innocent until proven guilty. With that understood, we object to
the way the present forfeiture system works because all drug cases, whether
forfeiture of assets is involved or not, begin as criminal cases, not as
civil matters. Thus, public agencies should be allowed to keep and use
seized assets only when the suspects are convicted of criminal activity. In
our legal system, expediency and money should not override any citizen's
right to due process. The forfeiture process appears to violate the spirit
of that principle, and state legislators should draft a referendum that
requires criminal conviction before forfeiture is of assets is allowed.

Voters in Oregon recently approved by a 2-1 margin a measure mandating that
suspects should not have to relinquish property unless prosecutors prove
they committed crimes. Voters in Iowa, as well as Illinois and 46 other
states where similar forfeiture laws are on the books, deserve the same
opportunity to protect individuals' rights and rights to their property.