FORFEITING FREEDOM

Federal Officials Should Back Off an Attempt to Seize a Medical
Marijuana Patient's House

For a brief period it looked as if federal authorities were going to
leave sick people who use marijuana medicinally alone for a while, at
least until Raich v. Ashcroft, the medical marijuana case currently
before the U.S. Supreme Court, is decided.

But it looks as if they're back.

Last week the federal government filed to take by forfeiture the home
of Wesley Crosiar, 52, a medical marijuana patient who was growing 134
plants for himself and six other patients on his five acres of land
near San Andreas in Calaveras County, in the eastern Sierras southeast
of Sacramento.

Civil forfeiture, sometimes called seizure, is a process whereby
authorities can seize property that is alleged to have been used in
the commission of a crime or represents the proceeds of criminal
activity. It has often been misused, because property can be seized
when the person who owns it has not yet been convicted of or even
formally charged with a crime.

The theory is that the property participated in the alleged crime, but
since this is a civil rather than a criminal procedure there's no
presumption of innocence and the burden of proof on the state is
light. After decades of abuse both federal and state forfeiture laws
have been tightened slightly in recent years, but they are still too
permissive. The major flaw is that the police agency seizing the
property gets to keep it or the proceeds of selling it, which creates
a huge conflict of interest and an incentive to get "seizure fever."

To be sure, marijuana cultivation is still illegal under federal law,
although cultivation for medical use is legal under California law.
But before Californians passed Proposition 215 in 1996, the feds
hardly ever went after cultivation that involved fewer than 1,000 plants.

This forfeiture action appears to be a deliberate effort to undermine
California's medical marijuana law, which federal officials have
always opposed. Too bad they are seeking to do so by victimizing sick
people rather than trying to invalidate the law by challenging it in
court. Newly confirmed U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should
call them off.